php changing div using DOMDocument but doesn't update page - php

Question

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong but I'm getting the right nodeValue for what I want. It's just not updating when the php script is done. Here's the code:
$dom = new DOMDocument();
//suppress HTML5 and other errors
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$dom->loadHTMLFile($pageURL);
libxml_use_internal_errors(false);
$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$divContent = $xpath->query("//*[#id='resultStats']/p")->item(0);
$newText = new DOMText("100 results");
var_dump($divContent->nodeValue); //returns old test value "400 results" which is correct
$divContent->removeChild($divContent->firstChild);
$divContent->appendChild($newText);
var_dump($divContent->localName); //"p" because i got it from <p> in resultStats
var_dump($divContent->textContent); //"100 results"
var_dump($divContent->nodeValue); //"100 results"
more of the HTML that is around it
<div class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="resultStats span3 offset1" id="resultStats">
<p>400 results found.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="span12">
<div class="row">
<div class="span6 offset1">
<?php
if (isset($_POST['q'])) {
//code from above that is executing every time from tests
}
?>
</div>
<div class="span5">
span5
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. If I do dom->save it rewrites everything (even php code) so I don't think that's a good idea.

Answer 1

I don't understand why you're using DOMDocument for this. Can't you just do this:
<div class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="resultStats span3 offset1" id="resultStats">
<?php
// get new result count somehow in $resultCount
echo '<p>'.$resultCount.' results found</p>';
?>
</div>
</div>