Question

I am using xpath to remove <br /> from nodes with this code below,

$nodeList = $xpath->query("//p[node()[1][self::br]]/br[1] | //p[node()[last()][self::br]]/br[last()] | //*[node()[last()][self::br]]/br[last()]");
foreach($nodeList as $node) 
{
   $node->parentNode->removeChild($node);
}

So it removes <p>Text<strong><br /></strong></p> to <p>Text</p> which is perfect.

But I don’t want it to remove <br /> from <p>Text<strong>Bold<br /></strong>Break</p> because the are text after <br />.

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

If the node value of the <br>‘s parent element node is an empty string, you want to remove it. That probably matches your needs better:

//br[string(..) = '']

A code example that shows which one is matching those (adds a remove attribute):

<?php

$xml = simplexml_load_string('
<root>
   <p>Text<strong><br /></strong></p>
   <p>Text<strong>Bold<br /></strong></p>
</root>
');

foreach($xml->xpath('//br[string(..) = ""]') as $br) {
    $br['remove'] = 'remove';
}

echo $xml->asXML();

Output (Demo):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
   <p>Text<strong><br remove="remove"/></strong></p>
   <p>Text<strong>Bold<br/></strong></p>
</root>