Get the text content of a node, but ignore child nodes

Question

<foo>
  a
  <bar> b </bar>
</foo>

both $foo->textContent and $foo->nodeValue return a b.

How can I get just a (the text from the node, without text from any child nodes)

score 9 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

9

This might be helpful. Using what I found here and here

$txt = "";
foreach($foo->childNodes as $node) {
    if ($node->nodeType == XML_TEXT_NODE) {
        $txt .= $node->nodeValue;
    }
}

edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

Community

1
1

answered Mar 29 '13 at 12:44

jonhopkins

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Don't know why it's so hard to find an actual answer to that simple question. After searching for hours, this answer IS the best answer found so far. Should be upvoted. – Patrick L. Mar 05 '18 at 14:03

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 29 '13 at 12:37

4

Use firstChild :

$foo->firstChild->textContent;

answered Mar 29 '13 at 12:37

zessx

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What if there is text after ``? Will this get that text too? – jonhopkins Mar 29 '13 at 12:38
No, but you'll be able to use `lastChild` instead. A better way to do this would be to wrap the text into an element. – zessx Mar 29 '13 at 12:42

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 29 '13 at 12:45

Try this code

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadXML('<root><foo>a<bar>b</bar></foo><foo>bar</foo></root>');
$foos = $doc->getElementsByTagName('foo');
foreach($foos as $v){
   echo $v->firstChild->wholeText.'<br />';
}

The firstChild property of DOMNode returns a DOMText object as there is a "text node" before <bar> in first <foo>

Get the text content of a node, but ignore child nodes

3 Answers3

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