PHP Simple HTML DOM counts wrong the number of elements

Question

Using this code I want to count the number of elements (dt) with class "level3" in certain node:

include_once('simple_html_dom.php');
ini_set("memory_limit", "-1");
ini_set('max_execution_time', 1200);

function parseInit($url) {
  $ch = curl_init();
  $timeout = 0;
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);     
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 2); 
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
  $data = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);
  return $data;
}

$data = parseInit("https://www.smile-dental.de/index.php");
$html = new simple_html_dom();
$html = $html->load($data);
$struct = $html->find("dt.level1", 0)->next_sibling()->find("dt.level2", 0)->next_sibling()->find("dt.level3");
echo count($struct);
$html->clear();  
unset($html);

But as a result I've got such problem. Real result should be 2, but I get 53 (total count of the DT elements with class "level3" into the first DT node with class "level1" ). Could you help me and explain what the problem is?

Thanks in advance!

---EDIT--- Generally, I want to create hierarchical structure of links (of left navigation bar). I wrote such function. But it works wrong, and maybe because of situation which was written by me above. But maybe there also other problems besides this one in the code.

function get_links($struct) {
    static $iter = 1;
    $nav_left_links = $struct->find("dt.level".$iter);
    echo "<ul>";   
    foreach ($nav_left_links as $links) {
        echo "<li>".$links->find("a", 0)->href;
        echo str_pad('',4096)."\n";
        ob_flush();
        flush();
        usleep(500000);
        $iter++;
        if ($links->next_sibling() && count($links->next_sibling()->find("dt")) > 0) {
            get_links($links->next_sibling());
        } else {
            $iter--;
            if ($key == count($nav_left_links)) {
                break;
            } else {
                continue;   
            }
        }
        echo "</li>";  
    }
    echo "</ul>";
    $iter--;
}

$data = parseInit("https://www.smile-dental.de/index.php");
$html = new simple_html_dom();
$html = $html->load($data);
$struct = $html->find(".mod_vertical_dropmenu_142_inner", 0);
get_links($struct);
$html->clear();  
unset($html); 

Or maybe if somebody knows how to rewrite this code without PHP Simple HTML DOM, using classic methods for parsing, I would be very grateful.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, it looks like you have uncovered a bug. I did some experiments, and even after correcting the validation errors, simple-html-dom wasn't able to traverse the dl, dt, and dd elements properly. I did get it to work when I used a regex to convert all the dl elements to ul, and the dd and dt elements to li, though:

result of $html->find("li.level1", 1)->find("li.level2", 1)->find("li.level3");

<li class="level3 off-nav-321-8120 notparent first"><span class="outer"> <span class="inner"> <a href="/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&amp;view=productdetails&amp;virtuemart_category_id=321&amp;virtuemart_product_id=8120"><span>Pro-Seal Versiegeler</span></a> </span> </span></li>
<li class="level3 off-nav-321-8120 notparent first"></li>
<li class="level3 off-nav-321-8122 notparent last"><span class="outer"> <span class="inner"> <a href="/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&amp;view=productdetails&amp;virtuemart_category_id=321&amp;virtuemart_product_id=8122"><span>Pro-Seal L.E.D. Versiegeler</span></a> </span> </span></li>
<li class="level3 off-nav-321-8122 notparent last"></li>