Question

My question is best phrase as: Remove a child with a specific attribute, in SimpleXML for PHP

except I’m not using simpleXML.

I’m new to XML for PHP so I may not be doing the best way

I have a xml created using the $dom->save($xml) for each individual user. (not placing all in one xml due to undisclosed reasons)

It gives me that xml declaration <?xml version='1.0'?> (no idea how to make it to others, but that’s not the point, hopefully)

<?xml version='1.0'?> <details>  <person>name</person>  <data1>some data</data1>  <data2>some data</data2>  <data3>some data</data3>  <category id='0'>   <categoryName>Cat 1</categoryName>   <categorydata1>some data</categorydata1>  </category>  <category id='1'>   <categoryName>Cat 2</categoryName>   <categorydata1>some data</categorydata1>   <categorydata2>some data</categorydata2>   <categorydata3>some data</categorydata3>   <categorydata4>some data</categorydata4>  </category> </details> 

And I want to remove a category that has a specific attribute named id with the DOM class in php when i run a function activated from using a remove button.

the following is the debug of the function im trying to get to work. Can i know what I’m doing wrong?

function CatRemove($myXML){         $xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();         $xmlDoc->load( $myXML );         $categoryArray = array();          $main = $xmlDoc->getElementsByTagName( 'details' )->item(0);          $mainElement = $xmlDoc->getElementsByTagName( 'details' );         foreach($mainElement as $details){             $currentCategory = $details->getElementsByTagName( 'category' );             foreach($currentCategory as $category){                 $categoryID = $category->getAttribute('id');                 array_push($categoryArray, $categoryID);                 if($categoryID == $_POST['categorytoremoveValue']) {                     return $categoryArray;                 }             }         }           $xmlDoc->save( $myXML );     } 

Well the above prints me an array of [0]->0 all the time when i slot the return outside the if. is there a better way? I’ve tried using getElementbyId as well but I’ve no idea how to work that.

I would prefer not to use an attribute though if that would make things easier.

Answer 1

Ok, let’s try this complete example of use:

function CatRemove($myXML, $id) {     $xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();     $xmlDoc->load($myXML);     $xpath = new DOMXpath($xmlDoc);     $nodeList = $xpath->query('//category[@id=''.(int)$id.'']');     if ($nodeList->length) {         $node = $nodeList->item(0);         $node->parentNode->removeChild($node);     }     $xmlDoc->save($myXML); }  // test data $xml = <<<XML <?xml version='1.0'?> <details>  <person>name</person>  <data1>some data</data1>  <data2>some data</data2>  <data3>some data</data3>  <category id='0'>   <categoryName>Cat 1</categoryName>   <categorydata1>some data</categorydata1>  </category>  <category id='1'>   <categoryName>Cat 2</categoryName>   <categorydata1>some data</categorydata1>   <categorydata2>some data</categorydata2>   <categorydata3>some data</categorydata3>   <categorydata4>some data</categorydata4>  </category> </details> XML; // write test data into file file_put_contents('untitled.xml', $xml); // remove category node with the id=1 CatRemove('untitled.xml', 1); // dump file content echo '<pre>', htmlspecialchars(file_get_contents('untitled.xml')), '</pre>';