PHP Dom: nodeValue read as object instead of string

Question

I'm trying to pull the links off of a bunch of webpages and report them in tables. I have this function, get_links($pageId), which is supposed to get the contents of the page and pull out the values and href attributes of each anchor tag.

function get_links($pageId) {
    $page_contents = file_get_contents('http://www.mysite.com/?p='.$pageId);
    $html = new DOMDocument();
    @$html->loadHTML($page_contents);
    $anchors = $html->getElementsByTagName('a');
    $link_array = array();
    foreach($anchors as $anchor) {
        if (!empty($anchor->nodeValue)) {
            $text = $anchor->nodeValue;
            $link = $anchor->getAttribute('href');
            $link_array[$text] = $link;
        }
    }
    return $link_array;
}

When I run this function on one of the pages, it returns nothing. For example, if I call:

$page_links = get_links('someId');
foreach($page_links as $text->$link) {
    //my print functions
};

I get "Fatal error: Cannot access empty property" for the foreach line.

Echoing $text and $link in the foreach($anchors) loop works fine. So does echoing the values from $link_array after the loop. But echoing the keys doesn't. If I put in this test right after the loop:

foreach($link_array as $text->$link) {echo $text;}

I get this error: "Catchable fatal error: Object of class stdClass could not be converted to string."

Why would it print alright during the loop but be treated as an object when I put it in an array to return?

Marc B · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-01 20:48:38Z

1

You're trying to assign the iterated valutes of the foreach loop to an object's attribute. I think you actually want

foreach($link_array as $text => $link) { echo $text;}

instead.

Saying $text->$link is telling PHP to take the current foreach iterated value, and assign it to a $link property of the $text object - however, $text and $link are not objects at that point, so you're assigning to non-existence attributes of a non-existent object, causing the "Cannot access empty property" error.

edited Nov 1, 2011 at 20:48

answered Nov 1, 2011 at 20:43

Marc B

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2 Comments

Xeoncross Over a year ago

+1 $text => $link NOT $text->$link. Read the error message.

tkm256 Over a year ago

Duh. Thank you. It's been a while since I've coded in PHP...the syntax errors always get me!

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