Remove XML Child Node - php

Question

I wonder whether someone may be able to help me please.
I'm using this page to allow users to view a gallery of their uploaded images.
Upon upload, the images are saved in this filepath UploadedFiles/userid/locationid/image and the details of the image i.e. name, description etc are saved in an XML file called files.xml which located in the same directory as the images. An extract of this is shown below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
- <files>
<file name="AC-0003749-Clark_145520.jpg" source="AC-0003749-Clark_145520.jpg" size="3873" originalname="AC-0003749-Clark_145520.jpg" description="No description provided" userid="1" locationid="1" />
</files>
The gallery gives additional functionality to the user by, via the icon under each image, the ability to delete each image. This is done via the following code:
Icon click Event
<script type="text/javascript">
Galleria.ready(function() {
this.$('thumblink').click();
$(".galleria-image").append(
"<span class='btn-delete ui-icon ui-icon-trash'></span>");
$(".btn-delete").live("click", function(){
var img = $(this).closest(".galleria-image").find("img");
// send the AJAX request
$.ajax({
url : 'delete.php',
type : 'post',
data : { image : img.attr('src') },
success : function(){
alert('Deleting image... ');
img.parent().fadeOut('slow');
}
});
return false;
});
});
</script>
delete.php - Amended Code
<?php
if (!empty($_POST)) {
$image = $_POST['image'];
if (file_exists($image)) {
unlink($image);
}
}
$doc = new DOMDocument;
$doc->load('files.xml');
$thedocument = $doc->documentElement;
$list = $thedocument->getElementsByTagName('files');
$nodeToRemove = null;
foreach ($list as $domElement){
if ($attrValue == '$image') { $domElement->parentNode->removeChild($domElement); }
}
if ($nodeToRemove != null)
$thedocument->removeChild($nodeToRemove);
echo $doc->saveXML();
?>
The deletion of the physical image works fine, but I'm having great difficulty in working out how to delete the relevant child node. Although I receive no error message the node is not deleted. I have received some guidance here from this site about how to go about this, i.e. via PHP XML DOM, but to be honest the more I read about this, the more I get confused. I just can't seem to get my head around it.
I just wondered whether someone could have a look at this please and let me know where I've gone wrong.
Many thanks and kind regards

Answer 1

To remove a node that was found with getElementsByTagName you can use the following to remove it:
if (!empty($_POST)) {
$image = $_POST['image'];
if (file_exists($image)) {
unlink($image);
}
$doc = new DOMDocument;
$doc->load('files.xml');
// iterate over all tags named <file>
$list = $doc->getElementsByTagName('file');
foreach ($list as $domElement) {
// check whether attribute 'source' equals $image
if ($domElement->getAttribute('source') == $image) {
// remove the node
$domElement->parentNode->removeChild($domElement);
}
}
echo $doc->saveXML();
}