PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser - php

Question

I just started to use PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser.
Now I'm trying to extract all elements surrounded with a <b>-tag inclduing </b> from an exsiting HTML document. This works fine with
foreach($html->find('b') as $q)
echo $q;
How can I achieve to show up only elements surrounded with the <b>,</b>-tags followed by a <span class="marked">?
Update:
I've used firebug to get the css path for the elements. Now it looks like this:
foreach ($html->find('html body div#wrapper table.desc tbody tr td div span.marked') as $x)
foreach ($x->find('html body div#wrapper table.desc tbody tr td table.split tbody tr td b') as $d)
echo $d;
But it won't work... Any Ideas?
Update:
To clarify my question here a sample tr of the document with starting table and ending table tags.
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="desc">
<tr>
<th width="25%" scope="col"><div align="center">1</div></th>
<th width="50" scope="col"><div align="center">2</div></th>
<th width="10%" scope="col"><div align="center">3</div></th>
<th width="15%" scope="col"><div align="center">4</div></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top" bgcolor="#E9E9E9"><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 2px"> 1 </div></td>
<td>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="split"> <tr>
<td>
<b> element to extract</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="split"> <tr>
<td width="15px" valign="top"> </td>
<td width="15px" valign="top">
<div style="background-color:green ;color:#FFFFFF; text-align:center;padding-bottom: 1px">
1
</div>
</td>
<td>
abed
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="15px" valign="top"> </td>
<td width="15px" valign="top">
<div style="background-color:green ;color:#FFFFFF; text-align:center;padding-bottom: 1px">
2
</div>
</td>
<td>
ddee
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="15px" valign="top"> </td>
<td width="15px" valign="top">
<div style="background-color:green ;color:#FFFFFF; text-align:center;padding-bottom: 1px">
3
</div>
</td>
<td>
xdef
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="15px" valign="top"> </td>
<td width="15px" valign="top">
<div style="background-color:green ;color:#FFFFFF; text-align:center;padding-bottom: 1px">
4
</div>
</td>
<td>
abbcc
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="15px" valign="top"> </td>
<td width="15px" valign="top">
<div style="background-color:green ;color:#FFFFFF; text-align:center;padding-bottom: 1px">
5
</div>
</td>
<td>
ab
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="15px" valign="top"> </td>
<td width="15px" valign="top">
<div style="background-color:green ;color:#FFFFFF; text-align:center;padding-bottom: 1px">
6
</div>
</td>
<td>
e1
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
<td valign="top"><div style="text-align: center"> <span class="marked">marked</span> </div></td>
<td valign="top"><div style="text-align: center"> </div></td>
</tr>
</table>

Answer 1

Try the following CSS selector
b > span.marked
That would return the span though, so you probably have to do $e->parent() to get to the b element.
Also see Best Methods to parse HTML for alternatives to SimpleHtmlDom
Edit after update:
Your browser will modify the DOM. If you look at your markup, you will see that there is no tbody elements. Yet Firebug gives you
html body div#wrapper table.desc tbody tr td div span.marked'
html body div#wrapper table.desc tbody tr td table.split tbody tr td b'
Also, your question does not match the queries. You asked how to find
elements surrounded with the <b>,</b>-tags followed by a <span class="marked">
That can be read to either mean
<b><span class="marked">foo</span></b>
or
<b><element>foo</element></b><span class="marked">foo</span>
For that first use the child combinator I have shown earlier. For the second, use the adjacent sibling combinator
b + span.marked
to get the span and then use $e->prev_sibling() to return the previous sibling of element (or null if not found).
However, in your shown markup, there is neither nor. There is only a DIV with a SPAN child having the marked class
<div style="text-align: center"> <span class="marked">marked</span>
If that is what you want to match, it's the child combinator again. Of course, you have to change the b then to a div.

Answer 2

More simple is from manual:
foreach($html->find('b') as $q)
echo $q->plaintext;