filter xml CDATA response

Question

Well, I do a return simplexml_load_string($data, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_COMPACT | LIBXML_NOCDATA | LIBXML_NOBLANKS | LIBXML_NOEMPTYTAG ); and to parse xml response.

The problem is the [description]'s content is really messed up and I need to select the data I need.

[description] => 
    <a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/cb-YpE1z5IhjWrmCM62DSTU8jQ9X4IZryVR/the_dish_with_doc_willoughby/"><img src="http://s4.mcstatic.com/thumb/8000947/21507982/4/directors_cut/0/1/the_dish_with_doc_willoughby.jpg?v=8" align="right" border="0" alt="THE Dish with Doc Willoughby" vspace="4" hspace="4" width="134" height="78" /></a>
    <p>
        Doc Willoughby, guru of &quot;America's Test Kitchen,&quot; stopped by &quot;CBS The Morning: Saturday&quot; to share his ultimate dish with Rebecca Jarvis and Jeff Glor: Roast Beef Tenderloin with Dried Fruit and Nut Stuffing.                 <br>Ranked <strong>4.00</strong> / 5 | 2 views | <a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/cb-YpE1z5IhjWrmCM62DSTU8jQ9X4IZryVR/the_dish_with_doc_willoughby/">0 comments</a><br/>
    </p>
    <p>
            <a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/cb-YpE1z5IhjWrmCM62DSTU8jQ9X4IZryVR/the_dish_with_doc_willoughby/"><strong>Click here to watch the video</strong></a> (04:58)<br/>
        Submitted By:                       <a href="http://www.metacafe.com/channels/CBS/">CBS</a><br/>
        Tags:
        <a href="http://www.metacafe.com/topics/cbsepisode/">Cbsepisode</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.metacafe.com/topics/dish/">Dish</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.metacafe.com/topics/doc_willoughby/">Doc Willoughby</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.metacafe.com/topics/america%27s_test_kitchen/">America's Test Kitchen</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.metacafe.com/topics/roast_beef_tenderloin/">Roast Beef Tenderloin</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.metacafe.com/topics/dried_fruit/">Dried Fruit</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.metacafe.com/topics/nut_stuffing/">Nut Stuffing</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.metacafe.com/topics/cbs_this_morning/">CBS This Morning</a>&nbsp;                      <br/>
    Categories: <a href='http://www.metacafe.com/videos/news_and_events/'>News &amp; Events</a>                     </p>

As you can see, it's really messed up and I was wondering how can I get for example the first <p>'s data until "
Ranked ..." and Tags also

Edit:

ok heres the php code I am using:

        $dom = new DOMDocument();
        @$dom->loadHTML($result->description); // or you can use loadXML
        $dom->normalizeDocument();
        /*$dom->resolveExternals = false;
        $dom->substituteEntities = false;*/
        $xml = simplexml_import_dom($dom);
        $data['viewData']['data']['description'] = $xml;

or

        $paragraph = $dom->getElementsByTagName('p');  -> this doesn't work
        //$xml = simplexml_import_dom($dom);
        $data['viewData']['data']['description'] = $paragraph;

and here is the output:

Is there any way of "making more beautiful the output"? I mean better ordered... I have also tried using the getElementsByTagName('p') but with no success

@DorShemer do you know any place where I could read some more info about HTML parsing... right now I am reading http://docs.php.net/manual/en/domdocument.loadhtml.php — Alex, Jan 22 '12 at 21:23
@DorShemer yea, but I was meaning if you knew something else — Alex, Jan 22 '12 at 21:26
possible duplicate of [How to get src from CDATA in RSS?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8838742/how-to-get-img-src-from-cdata-in-rss) — salathe, Jan 22 '12 at 22:16

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

1

Take a look at this my previous answer. It parses a string into XML object so you can easily access any node.

In your case to get the first paragraph:

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($description); // $description - your string from the feed
if (!$dom) {
    die('Error loading HTML string.');
}

$xml = simplexml_import_dom($dom);
$p = (string)$xml->body->p;

echo '<pre>'; print_r($p); echo '</pre>';

edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

Community

1
1

answered Jan 22 '12 at 21:29

dfsq

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Don't repeat your answer to an identical question. – salathe Jan 22 '12 at 22:15
@salathe who are you talking about? – Alex Jan 22 '12 at 22:40

filter xml CDATA response

1 Answers1