Parse span class text with DOM PHP

Question

I've been having an issue trying to parse text in a span class with DOM. Here is my code example.

$remote = "http://website.com/";
$doc = new DOMDocument();
@$doc->loadHTMLFile($remote);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($doc);
$node = $xpath->query('//span[@class="user"]');
echo $node;

and this returns the following error -> "Catchable fatal error: Object of class DOMNodeList could not be converted to string". I am so lost I NEED HELP!!!

What I am trying to do is parse the user name between this span tag.

<span class="user">bballgod093</span>

Here is the full source from the remote website.

<div id="randomwinner">
    <div id="rndmLeftCont">
        <h2 id="rndmTitle">Hourly Random <span>Winner</span></h2>
    </div>
    <div id="rndmRightCont">
        <div id="rndmClaimImg">
            <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="200">
                <tbody>
                    <tr>
                        <td align="right" valign="middle">
                        </td>
                    </tr>
                </tbody>
            </table>
        </div>
    <div id="rndmCaimTop">

    <span class="user">bballgod093</span>You've won 1000 SB</div>

    <div id="rndmCaimBottom">
        <a id="rndmCaimBtn" class="btn1 btn2" href="/?cmd=cp-claim-random" rel="nofollow">Claim Bucks</a>
    </div>

    </div>
    <div class="clear"></div>
</div>

Jon · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-11 13:01:39Z

3

This call

$node = $xpath->query('//span[@class="user"]');

does not return a string, but a DOMNodeList.

You can use this list somewhat like array (using $node->length for the number of elements and $node->item(0) to get the first element) to get DOMNode objects. Each of these objects has a nodeValue property which is a string.

So you would do something like

$node = $xpath->query('//span[@class="user"]');
if($node->length != 1) {
    // error?
}

echo $node->item(0)->nodeValue;

Of course, changing the variable name for $node to something more appropriate would be nice.

edited Mar 11, 2011 at 13:01

answered Mar 11, 2011 at 12:49

Jon

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2 Comments

Jon Over a year ago

@jennifer: Sorry, my mistake. I corrected the answer. Also, it does not make any difference how many instances you have. The interface to access the query results is the same no matter what.

jennifer Over a year ago

thank you! i think its working but the page is blank when i reload but no text

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