php|architect's Guide to Web Scraping with PHP - Wind Business ...

SimpleXML Extension ” 115
echo $sxe->body->ul->li;
// Also outputs "Foo" -- note that "html" is referenced this time
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTML($markupString);
$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);
echo $xpath->evaluate(’/html/body/ul/li[0]’);
// Outputs "ul"
echo $sxe->body->ul->getName(), PHP_EOL;
// Outputs "Foo" then "Bar"
foreach ($sxe->body->ul->li as $li) {
echo $li, PHP_EOL;
}
// Does the same thing
foreach ($sxe->body->ul->children() as $li) {
echo $li, PHP_EOL;
}
?>
When referencing a child element of the current element (via the body property of
$sxe above, for example), note that the child element being accessed is also an instance
of SimpleXMLElement. This means it’s not only possible to chain element access,
but also to reference the last element in such a chain using a variable. See the
first foreach loop shown above for an example of both of these.
Accessing Attributes
Where element access makes use of enumerated arrays for accessing multiple elements
with the same name on the same hierarchical level, attribute access makes
use of associative arrays. The example below uses the same $markupString sample
data as in the previous example.