Question

I’m stuck with this and can’t find the answer on the net. I want to use DOM to load XML.
I have an XML with the following scheme:

<type1>
   <other>...</other>
   <number>bla</number>
   <other>...</other>
</type1>
<type1>
   <other>...</other>
   <number>bla</number>
   <other>...</other>
</type1>
...
<type2>
   <other>...</other>
   <number>bla</number>
   <other>...</other>
</type2>
<type2>
   <other>...</other>
   <number>bla</number>
   <other>...</other>
</type2>

Both data of type1 and type2 occur multiple times. The tag number occurs in both types.
When I use

$searchNode = $xmlHandler->getElementsByTagName("number"); 

I get numbers of both types. How can I get only the numbers of type1 or type2?

UPDATE:
Based on the suggestions of Kami and Ikku I have solved it for DOM. Below the working code:

<?php  
$xmlHandler = new DOMDocument();
$xmlHandler->load("xmldocumentname.xml");

$xpath = new DOMXPath($xmlHandler);
$searchNodes = $xpath->query("/type1");
foreach( $searchNodes as $searchNode ) { 
    $xmlItem = $searchNode->getElementsByTagName("number"); 
    $number = $xmlItem->item(0)->nodeValue; 
    $xmlItem = $searchNode->getElementsByTagName("other"); 
    $other = $xmlItem->item(0)->nodeValue; 

    echo "NUMBER=" . $number . "<br>";
    echo "OTHER=" . $other . "<br>";

}
?> 

Answer 1

You need to expand your search to allow for the specific value for a parent. The getElementsByTagName limits you to the name of the tag you are looking for so it cannot do a general search. Use a more generalised search. I am using xpath from the simplexml library in the example below.

$xmlHandler = simplexml_load_file("somexmlfile.xml");

$searchNode = $xmlHandler->xpath("type1/number"); // Gets type1 numbers
$searchNode = $xmlHandler->xpath("type2/number"); // Gets type2 numbers

To do the same with DOM – There is an extra step of creating an xpath object but this is required to make the searching easier.

// Create new DOM object:
$dom = new DomDocument();
$dom->loadXML($xml);

$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$searchNode = $xpath->query("type1/number");
$searchNode = $xpath->query("type2/number");

The above is untested; so modify as required.