How to use DOMDocument to get child elements? - php

Question

I am trying to get the text of child elements using the PHP DOM.
Specifically, I am trying to get only the first <a> tag within every <tr>.
The HTML is like this...
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
1st Link
</td>
<td>
2nd Link
</td>
<td>
3rd Link
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
1st Link
</td>
<td>
2nd Link
</td>
<td>
3rd Link
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
My sad attempt at it involved using foreach() loops, but would only return Array() when doing a print_r() on the $aVal.
$dom = new DOMDocument();
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$dom->loadHTML(returnURLData($url));
libxml_use_internal_errors(false);
$tables = $dom->getElementsByTagName('table');
$aVal = array();
foreach ($tables as $table) {
foreach ($table as $tr){
$trVal = $tr->getElementsByTagName('tr');
foreach ($trVal as $td){
$tdVal = $td->getElementsByTagName('td');
foreach($tdVal as $a){
$aVal[] = $a->getElementsByTagName('a')->nodeValue;
}
}
}
}
Am I on the right track or am I completely off?

Answer 1

Put this code in test.php
require 'simple_html_dom.php';
$html = file_get_html('test1.php');
foreach($html->find('table tr') as $element)
{
foreach($element->find('a',0) as $element)
{
echo $element->plaintext;
}
}
and put your html code in test1.php
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
1st Link
</td>
<td>
2nd Link
</td>
<td>
3rd Link
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
1st Link
</td>
<td>
2nd Link
</td>
<td>
3rd Link
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Answer 2

I am pretty sure I am late, but better way should be to iterate through all "tr" with getElementByTagName and then while iterating through each node in nodelist recieved use getElementByTagName"a". Now no need to iterate through nodeList point out the first element recieved by item(0). That's it! Another way can be to use xPath.
I personally don't like SimpleHtmlDom because of the loads of extra added features it uses where a small functionality is required. In case of heavy scraping also memory management issue can hold you back, its better if you yourself do DOM Analysis rather than depending thrid party application.
Just My opinion. Even I used SHD initially but later realized this.

Answer 3

You're not setting $trVal and $tdVal yet you're looping them ?