PHP Trying to get property of non-object with getElementsByTagName

Question

I have a simple scraper that fetches HTML using DomDocument and then displays the results.

foreach ($dom->getElementsByTagName('li') as $li) {
        $key = $li->getElementsByTagName('span')->item(0)->textContent;
        $value = $li->getElementsByTagName('strong')->item(0)->textContent;
        $results[trim($key)] = trim($value);
        }

However, if the script fails to retrieve the HTML, or the options entered are wrong, it returns

Trying to get property of non-object

$key = $li->getElementsByTagName('span')->item(0)->textContent;

How do I check if it exists?

I have tried to set that $key line as variable and check if length is greater than 0, but even as variable it fails.

Possible duplicate of [Reference - What does this error mean in PHP?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12769982/reference-what-does-this-error-mean-in-php) — Dezza, Nov 28 '16 at 12:31

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 28 '16 at 12:30

3

Check the return value of the item method:

$span = $li->getElementsByTagName('span')->item(0);
if (!$span) {
  continue;
}

Actually you should always check the return values.

answered Nov 28 '16 at 12:30

Ruslan Osmanov

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Thankyou, I have also added a checks on all the values. – ServerSideSkittles Nov 28 '16 at 12:37

PHP Trying to get property of non-object with getElementsByTagName

1 Answers1