Question

I’m using a variable to create an element. But I’m getting this error:

Warning: DOMDocument::createElement() expects parameter 1 to be string, object given

// load up your XML
$xml = new DOMDocument;

$xml->load('test.xml');    

$parent_node = $xml->createElement('parent');

foreach ($xml->getElementsByTagName('product') as $product ) 
{
 $append = array();

foreach($product->getElementsByTagName('name') as $name ) {
// Stick $name onto the array
$append[] = $name;
}

foreach ($append as $a)  {

$parent_node->appendChild($xml->createElement($a, 'anothervalue'));

 $product->appendChild($parent_node);

}


$product->removeChild($xml->getElementsByTagName('details')->item(0));
//$product->appendChild($element);
}

// final result:

$result = $xml->saveXML();

Original XML structure:

<products>
 <product>
 <name>text</name>
 <name>text</name>
 <name>text</name>
 </product>
 </products>

I’m trying to create a new element whose value is the text of itself. I know what it has to look like. Why can’t I use an object to create an element?

The result I’m trying to obtain will look like this:

 <products>
 <product>
 <text>text</text>
 <text>text</text>
 <text>text</text>
 </product>
 </products>

Answer 1

You can’t pass an object, you must use the textContent or nodeValue properties:

$element = $xml->createElement(trim($a->textContent), 'anothervalue');

You may also want to strip it from illegal characters first:

$nodeName = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9_-]/i', '', $a->textContent);
$element = $xml->createElement($nodeName, 'anothervalue');