PHP and DOM: getting text from a child node

Question

I'm trying to get the text data from a child node of an element using PHP and DOM.

Here is the HTML data I'm having trouble parsing. I'm trying to obtain the email address.

<tr>
<th>Engineer:</th>
<td id="contact_person">Jack Smith &lt<a href='mailto:[email protected]'>[email protected]</a>&gt
    <table class='transparent'>
        <tr>
            <td>Work Phone</td>
            <td>(555) 555-5555</td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</td>

Here is my current code for processing that element:

$contact = $dom->getElementById("contact_person")->nodeValue;

This is the result I'm getting:

Jack Smith Work Phone(555) 555-5555

UPDATE: Removing &lt and &gt and replacing with a single hyphen between name and email address returns the following:

Jack Smith - [email protected] Phone(555) 555-5555

This is what I want to get:

[email protected]

I tried to get the developer to move the "id=contact_person" to the anchor that holds the email address. Things work fine when I do that in test, but it is not possible to do in our system.

I'm sure it's apparent, but I'm not really familar with DOM and looking for any guidance...

FINAL UPDATE: THE FIX:

$dom->getElementById("contact_person")->firstChild->nextSibling->nodeValue;

It's very odd that your DOM library is not returning the email address in your first example. Is the result really Jack Smith Work Phone(555) 555-5555 and not Jack Smith &[email protected]&gtWork Phone(555) 555-5555? — rockerest
– rockerest, Commented Sep 25, 2015 at 0:42
removing the &lt and &gt and replacing with a single hypen - did at least make the email address appear: <td id="customer_engineer">Jack Smith - <a href='mailto:[email protected]'>[email protected]</a> produces the result: Jack Smith - [email protected] Phone(555) 555-5555 — user3877504
– user3877504, Commented Sep 25, 2015 at 1:48
sorry. poor attempt to hide my code. assume contact_person is synonymous with customer_engineer. — user3877504
– user3877504, Commented Sep 25, 2015 at 2:00

user3877504 · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-25 02:50:57Z

1

This is ultimately what fixed the issue:

$dom->getElementById("contact_person")->firstChild->nextSibling->nodeValue;

answered Sep 25, 2015 at 2:50

user3877504

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bitfiddler · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-25 00:28:16Z

0

Try something like:

$contact = $dom->getElementById("contact_person")->firstChild->nodeValue;

answered Sep 25, 2015 at 0:28

bitfiddler

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5 Comments

user3877504 Over a year ago

firstChild->nodeValue; returned "Jack Smith". lastChild->nodeValue; returned "Work Phone(555)555-5555"

bitfiddler Over a year ago

So it seems like you want childNodes[1]

user3877504 Over a year ago

Changed to childNodes[1]: $dom->getElementById("contact_person")->childNodes[1]; Got the following Error: Fatal error: Cannot use object of type DOMNodeList as array

bitfiddler Over a year ago

Oops. Try childNodes->item(1). The PHP documentation is here: php.net/manual/en/class.domnode.php#domnode.props.childnodes

user3877504 Over a year ago

thanks for the link. changing to childNodes->item(1) continued to error. Your link led me to experiment... $dom->getElementById("contact_person")->firstChild->nextSibling->nodeValue; this worked!

Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-25 02:51:41Z

0

It may be more reliable to use an XPath query rather than using firstChild, nextSibling etc.

$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$node = $xpath->query("//*[@id='contact_person']//a[contains(@href,'mailto:')]")->item(0);
if( $node) {
    $email = $node->nodeValue;
}
else {
    $email = "NOT FOUND";
}

This will look for any link containing "mailto", regardless of where it is inside #contact_person. This means that it no longer relies on precise structure, just the container's ID and the fact that it is a mailto link.

answered Sep 25, 2015 at 2:51

Niet the Dark Absol

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