echo innerHTML, without outer node tags

Question

I'm using the DOMDocument class to parse a fairly unpredictable string of markup. It's not all that well formed and I need some data from it. Regex's are right out, of course.
So far, I've got this:

$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->loadHTML($str);
$contents = $dom->getElementsByTagName('body')->item(0);
echo $dom->saveXML($contents);

Now this gives me:

<body>
    <p>What I'm really after</p>
    <ul><li>Foo</li><li>Bar</li></ul>
    <h6>And so on</h6>
</body>

What really annoys me are those <body> tags. I want them gone. After grazing the web, I've stumbled across the weirdest workarounds. Some more hacky than others, so in the end, I settled for:

echo substr($dom->saveXML($contents), 6, -7);

Still feels hacky to me, but it's the best I could find. Is there a more reliable way of getting the innerHTML of the DOM, starting from a given node, without the corresponding tags actually showing up?

I've seen suggestions using regex's (a no-no IMHO), or even looping through all the children, echoing those that have childNodes of their own, and stringing together those that don't:

if ($contents->hasChildNodes())
{
    $children = $contents->getElementsByTagName('*');
    foreach($children as $child)
    {
        if ($child->hasChildNodes() || $child->nodeName === 'br')
        {//or isset($standaloneNodes[$child->nodeName])
            echo $dom->saveXML($child);
            continue;
        }

        echo '<'.$child->nodeName.'>'.$child->nodeValue.'</'.$child->nodeName.'>';
    }
}

But that, to me, seems even more absurd...

is the <body> tag always present? Do you want to remove ALL the tags? — kumarharsh
– kumarharsh, Commented May 30, 2013 at 15:58
@Harsh: The <body> tag is being added by DOMDocument (along with a doctype and <head> tag. All I want to do is parse the HTML, so I can get at some bits of data I need, and return a normalized version of the markup — Elias Van Ootegem
– Elias Van Ootegem, Commented May 30, 2013 at 16:00
@Harsh: I already have, compared to substr($dom->saveXML($contents), 6, -7);, the answer there is way too inefficient. — Elias Van Ootegem
– Elias Van Ootegem, Commented May 30, 2013 at 18:09
if you are gunning for speed, Kolink's solution isn't bad :) — kumarharsh
– kumarharsh, Commented May 30, 2013 at 19:55

Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-30 16:00:40Z

1

When exporting HTML, you must have a single root element. In most cases, the most useful one is the body. Since you're loading in an HTML fragment, you know for certain that it won't have any attributes, therefore the substr(...,6,-7) is perfectly predictable and fine.

answered May 30, 2013 at 16:00

Niet the Dark Absol

326k86 gold badges480 silver badges604 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

4 Comments

Elias Van Ootegem Over a year ago

Thanks for the quick response. It still feels a bit hacky... anyway: I'm done working for the day, but I'll accept your answer once I get home.

kumarharsh Over a year ago

yea, it is hacky, but does the job well. Although I'd fear using this due to its opaque purpose. :P

Elias Van Ootegem Over a year ago

@Harsh: That's why all programming languages I've ever used allow for comments...

Elias Van Ootegem Over a year ago

@Harsh: That, and preg_replace('/^[^>]+>(.+)<[^>]+>$/',$1',$dom->saveXML($contents));, which is, in theory, a more reliable way to strip the outer tags in 1 line, calls Cthulu

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

echo innerHTML, without outer node tags

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related