php simplexml asXML returns incl. outer element

Question

i managed to load a table (4x4 fields, links in first row) to simplexml, where on a link I expect returning only inner html of the link (bolds etc) but it returns whole element

  foreach($xml->tbody->children() as $tr){
  $row++;
  for ($i=0;$i<4;$i++)   {  
     $data[$row][$i]= $tr->td[$i]->asXML();   
     if($row==1)
     { $href[$i] = (string)$tr->td[$i]->a[0]['href'];
       $titl[$i] = $tr->td[$i]->a[0]->asXML(); // PROBLEMATIC POINT
     }
  }  

expected: 'link<b>text</b>'
returned: '<a href="....">link<b>text</b></a>'  /e.g. whole 'a' element/

if I would add the (string) type setting, I would loose the inner formating of the link,
while the above $tr->td[$i] returns only inner content of element td

just noticed trying to use (string) typesetting returns only unwrapped a text so any bold would be omitted ... bypassable by strip_tags to getplain text of link — Peminator, Feb 26 '13 at 23:13
SimpleXML has nothing to return inner XML of an element out of the box. So what is your question? — hakre, Feb 26 '13 at 23:26
then why if I do `$tr->td[$i]` it returns for example `hello` /inner content of that element/ instead of `hello` ?? — Peminator, Feb 26 '13 at 23:32
i'd like to achieve using only built-in php classes so no external classes solutions, if possible — Peminator, Feb 26 '13 at 23:44
I think this is one of those occasions where I'd go with the DOM over SimpleXML, as in this answer: http://stackoverflow.com/a/7128991/157957 The reason being you need to iterate over both the text nodes and child elements, which SimpleXML simplifies out of your reach... — IMSoP, Feb 27 '13 at 01:34
@Peminator: That is because it is the string (`__toString()`) value of that ``-element representing SimpleXMLElement. It is plain text - not XML. Try `$tr->td[$i]->asXML()` instead and you'll see that it is with the surrounding `...` tags. — hakre, Feb 28 '13 at 09:18
An IMSoP is right in my eyes, this is why I asked for more infos. I would have linked the exact same duplicate then. — hakre, Feb 28 '13 at 09:19

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 26 '13 at 23:36

1

Hope it helps:

$titl[$i] = $tr->td[$i]->a[0]->children()->asXML();

answered Feb 26 '13 at 23:36

apoq

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ooooh thought u saved my day, but after trying it returns,based on the example above only the `text` instead `linktext` - the non-bold text is missing... – Peminator Feb 26 '13 at 23:40
oops, just noticed that – apoq Feb 26 '13 at 23:42
On SimpleXMLElement objects representing zero or more elements (like the return value of `children()`), the method normally only works for the first element (like the method named `asXML()`). SimpleXML has only limited support (if one would say so at all) for textnodes. – hakre Feb 28 '13 at 09:13

php simplexml asXML returns incl. outer element

1 Answers1