CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpdomdocument
etsnyman
etsnyman

Reputation: 275

PHP: Cannot print first value of DOMDocument

I have a PHP script that is supposed to read an HTML file and then return the contents of the first <h1> tag that it finds. I do not want to use regex or the Simple HTML DOM Parser please - just plain, easy PHP.

This is my code thus far:

$document = new DOMDocument();
$document->loadHTMLFile($post_url);
$matches = $document->getElementsByTagName('h1');
$first_h1 = $matches->item(0);
echo $first_h1;

However, when I run the code, I get an error that says PHP Catchable fatal error: Object of class DOMElement could not be converted to string

Can anyone help me with where I am going wrong?

Thanks in advance!

SOLUTION: Replacing the last line with echo $first_h1->nodeValue; seems to do the trick.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 43

Answers (3)

v.radev
v.radev

Reputation: 136

You can also get the entire tag value with C14N method of the DOMNode class:

echo $first_h1->C14N();

https://www.php.net/manual/en/domnode.c14n.php

Upvotes: 0

Brian Driscoll
Brian Driscoll

Reputation: 19635

The issue is that $first_h1 is a DOMElement object rather than a string, and it has no method to convert itself to a string, so you cannot simply echo it out. You can, however do a var_dump on it:

$document = new DOMDocument();
$document->loadHTMLFile($post_url);
$matches = $document->getElementsByTagName('h1');
$first_h1 = $matches->item(0);
var_dump($first_h1);

If you need to get the text contents of the element (i.e. the text between the tags), use the nodeValue property:

echo $first_h1->nodeValue;

Upvotes: 1

Pedro Loureiro
Pedro Loureiro

Reputation: 355

$document is an object which can not be converted to string (some objects can).

See this link for all properties and methods it has to offer, e.g.

echo $document->tagName;

or

echo $document->textContent;

Upvotes: 0

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