How do I remove an element and its content from an XML file

Question

Below is the text I need to remove <w:drawing> tags and its content from

<w:document>
<w:t>some text here</w:t>
<w:drawing>drawing image</w:drawing>
</w:document>

i tried this

$result = preg_replace('/<w:drawing\b[^>]*>(.*?)<\/w:drawing>/i', '', $xml);

but stil getting <w:drawing> tags, any suggestion?

in result i want get

<w:document>
<w:t>some text here</w:t>
</w:document>

Is `$xml` a string ? Your code works for me if it does (apart from newlines) — Robin Mackenzie, Jun 10 '17 at 09:40
That is good. You should close your question because it is working. — Robin Mackenzie, Jun 10 '17 at 09:46
@RobinMackenzie I found new problem, its have some multilevel tag inside, like: and my script not working, my script only working on single level xml tag. — Arif Nur Rohman, Jun 10 '17 at 09:48
Does this represent your input? https://regex101.com/r/9O3enL/4 Please edit your question to post a best-likeness of your actual input data. And show exactly the output you want to generate from the new input. — mickmackusa, Jun 10 '17 at 11:48

miken32 · Answer 1 · 2017-09-12T23:08:34.750

What you've got here is not a complete XML document, so I've made some changes to it. Regardless, NEVER try to parse XML with regular expressions. NEVER!!

Here's a quick example using SimpleXML, though DOMDocument would work just as well:

$xml = <<< XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<w:document xmlns:w="w">
    <w:t>some text here</w:t>
    <w:drawing>drawing image</w:drawing>
</w:document>
XML;
$doc = new SimpleXMLElement($xml, 0, false, "w");
$doc->registerXPathNamespace("w", "w");
$drawings = $doc->xpath("//w:drawing");
foreach ($drawings as &$drawing) {
    unset($drawing[0]);
}
$new_xml = $doc->asXML();
echo $new_xml;

Output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<w:document xmlns:w="w">
    <w:t>some text here</w:t>

</w:document>

score -3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 10 '17 at 11:41

-3

You just need to replace your regex pattern with something like this

$result = preg_replace('/<w:drawing>.*<\/w:drawing>/', '', $xml);

answered Jun 10 '17 at 11:41

V.Andri

12

How do I remove an element and its content from an XML file

2 Answers2