Question

How can I select the string contents of the following nodes:

<span class="url">
 word
 <b class=" ">test</b>
</span>

<span class="url">
 word
 <b class=" ">test2</b>
 more words
</span>

I have tried a few things

//span/text()

Doesn’t get the bold tag

//span/string(.)

is invalid

string(//span)

only selects 1 node

I am using simple_xml in php and the only other option I think is to use //span which returns:

Array
(
    [0] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [@attributes] => Array
                (
                    [class] => url
                )

            [b] => test
        )

    [1] => SimpleXMLElement Object
        (
            [@attributes] => Array
                (
                    [class] => url
                )

            [b] => test2
        )

)

*note that it is also dropping the “more words” text from the second span.

So I guess I could then flatten the item in the array using php some how? Xpath is preferred, but any other ideas would help too.

Answer 1

$xml = '<foo>
<span class="url">
 word
 <b class=" ">test</b>
</span>

<span class="url">
 word
 <b class=" ">test2</b>
 more words
</span>
</foo>';
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadXML($xml); //or load an HTML document with loadHTML()
$x= new DOMXpath($dom);
foreach($x->query("//span[@class='url']") as $node) echo $node->textContent;