Replace PHP DOM Element

Question

I want to replace third table in php dom object with a new table. I can select it by

$table = $dom->getElementsByTagName('table')->item(3);

I tried

$table->parentNode->appendChild($new_table);

and it says

Catchable fatal error: Argument 1 passed to DOMNode::appendChild() must be an instance of DOMNode, string given in C:\xampp\htdocs\index.php on line 73

Can someone please explain what is wrong with the code or how I can correct it?

$new_table = "<table width='100%' bgcolor='#000'>$table_rows</table>";

Mike Dinescu · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-04 20:21:25Z

1

You'll have to use createElement to create the table fragment before appending it.

You could also create a fragment from the XML using appendXML and then append that fragment using appendChild

$fragment = $dom->createDocumentFragment();
$fragment->appendXML("<table width='100%' bgcolor='#000'>$table_rows</table>");
// now append the fragment
$table->parentNode->appendChild($fragment);

Here's a working example: http://ideone.com/0Lx742

edited Apr 4, 2014 at 20:21

answered Apr 4, 2014 at 19:38

Mike Dinescu

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4 Comments

AZee Over a year ago

it says: Warning: DOMNode::appendChild(): Document Fragment is empty $table->parentNode->appendChild($fragment);

Mike Dinescu Over a year ago

Not sure what else you're doing wrong but here's a working example: ideone.com/0Lx742

Mike Dinescu Over a year ago

@Azee Care to share? What turned out to be the problem?

AZee Over a year ago

Sure thing :) I just removed extra attributes from each row in $table_rows array for example "colspan" and it worked. Thanks a lot for your help.

Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-04 19:41:58Z

0

Miky's answer is step 1: you must construct your element as a DOM node.

$new_table = $dom->createElement("table");
$new_table->setAttribute("width","100%");
$new_table->setAttribute("bgcolor","#000");
foreach($table_rows as $row) $new_table->appendChild($row);
// the above assumes $table_rows is an array of TR nodes, not strings!

Step 2 is:

$table->parentNode->replaceChild($new_table,$table);

answered Apr 4, 2014 at 19:41

Niet the Dark Absol

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3 Comments

AZee Over a year ago

Can't I just append html from string instead of creating table and rows?

Niet the Dark Absol Over a year ago

No. Well... I suppose you could create another document, use loadHTML, then import the root node into the first document...

AZee Over a year ago

Yeah it makes sense but this approach will not work in my scenario. Let me tell you, I am just reading an html email ($message) that contains a table of products. In order to sort product's order in the table I am reading table rows into an array, sorting the array and recreating the table and appending it back to $message dom object. Am I following the right track?

AZee · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-05 21:56:53Z

0

I got it working by extracting the idea from answers below and some more research.

$table = $dom->getElementsByTagName('table')->item(3);
$new_table = $dom->createDocumentFragment();
$new_table->appendXML("<table width='100%' bgcolor='#EEEEEE'>$table_rows</table>");
$table->parentNode->replaceChild($new_table,$table);

The actual problem was with my $table_rows array that each row contained some extra attributes like "colspan", $nbsp; and some additional tags.

Thank you guys for your interest and support.

answered Apr 5, 2014 at 21:56

AZee

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