| Warning |
This extension is EXPERIMENTAL. The behaviour of this extension, including the names of its functions, and anything else documented about this extension may change in a future release of PHP without notice. Be warned and use this extension at your own risk. |
The domxml extension has been overhauled in PHP Version 4.3.0 in favour of a better compliance of the DOM standard. The extension still contains many old functions, but they should not be used anymore. Especially those non object oriented functions should be avoided.
The extension allows you to operate on an XML document with the DOM API. It also provides a function domxml_xmltree() to turn the complete XML document into a tree of PHP objects. Currently this tree should be considered read-only - you can modify it but this would not make any sense since DomDocument_dump_mem() cannot be applied to it. Therefore, if you want to read an XML file and write a modified version use the DomDocument_create_element(), DomDocument_create_text_node(), set_attribute(), etc. and finally DomDocument_dump_mem() functions.
This extension make use of the GNOME xml library. Download and install this library. You will need at least libxml-2.2.7.
This extension is only available if PHP was configured with --with-dom=[DIR].
There a quite some functions which do not fit into the DOM standard and should not be used anymore as listed in the following table. The function DomNode_append_child() has changed its behaviour. It now actually adds a child and not a sibling. If this breaks your application use the non DOM function DomNode_append_sibling().
Table 1. Deprecated functions and its replacements
| Old function | New function |
|---|---|
| xmldoc | domxml_open_mem() |
| xmldocfiel | domxml_open_file() |
| domxml_new_xmldoc | domxml_new_doc() |
| domxml_dump_mem | DomDocument_dump_mem() |
| domxml_dump_mem_file | DomDocument_dump_file() |
| DomDocument_dump_mem_file | DomDocument_dump_file() |
| DomDocument_add_root | DomDocument_create_element() followed by DomNode_append_child() |
| DomDocument_dtd | DomDocument_doctype() |
| DomDocument_root | DomDocument_document_element() |
| DomDocument_children | DomNode_child_nodes() |
| DomDocument_imported_node | No replacement. |
| DomNode_add_child | Create a new node with e.g. DomDocument_create_element() und add it with DomNode_append_child(). |
| DomNode_children | DomNode_child_nodes() |
| DomNode_parent | DomNode_parent_node() |
| DomNode_new_child | Create a new node with e.g. DomDocument_create_element() und add it with DomNode_append_child(). |
| DomNode_set_content | Create a new node with e.g. DomDocument_create_text_node() und add it with DomNode_append_child(). |
| DomNode_get_content | Content is just a text node and can be accessed with DomNode_child_nodes(). |
| DomNode_set_content | Content is just a text node and can be added with DomNode_append_child(). |
These constants are defined by this extension, and will only be available when the extension has either been compiled into PHP or dynamically loaded at runtime.
Table 2. XML constants
| Constant | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| XML_ELEMENT_NODE (integer) | 1 | Node is an element |
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_NODE (integer) | 2 | Node is an attribute |
| XML_TEXT_NODE (integer) | 3 | Node is a piece of text |
| XML_CDATA_SECTION_NODE (integer) | 4 | |
| XML_ENTITY_REF_NODE (integer) | 5 | |
| XML_ENTITY_NODE (integer) | 6 | Node is an entity like |
| XML_PI_NODE (integer) | 7 | Node is a processing instruction |
| XML_COMMENT_NODE (integer) | 8 | Node is a comment |
| XML_DOCUMENT_NODE (integer) | 9 | Node is a document |
| XML_DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE (integer) | 10 | |
| XML_DOCUMENT_FRAG_NODE (integer) | 11 | |
| XML_NOTATION_NODE (integer) | 12 | |
| XML_GLOBAL_NAMESPACE (integer) | 1 | |
| XML_LOCAL_NAMESPACE (integer) | 2 | |
| XML_HTML_DOCUMENT_NODE (integer) | ||
| XML_DTD_NODE (integer) | ||
| XML_ELEMENT_DECL_NODE (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_DECL_NODE (integer) | ||
| XML_ENTITY_DECL_NODE (integer) | ||
| XML_NAMESPACE_DECL_NODE (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_CDATA (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_ID (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_IDREF (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_IDREFS (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_ENTITY (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_NMTOKEN (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_NMTOKENS (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_ENUMERATION (integer) | ||
| XML_ATTRIBUTE_NOTATION (integer) | ||
| XPATH_UNDEFINED (integer) | ||
| XPATH_NODESET (integer) | ||
| XPATH_BOOLEAN (integer) | ||
| XPATH_NUMBER (integer) | ||
| XPATH_STRING (integer) | ||
| XPATH_POINT (integer) | ||
| XPATH_RANGE (integer) | ||
| XPATH_LOCATIONSET (integer) | ||
| XPATH_USERS (integer) | ||
| XPATH_NUMBER (integer) |
The API of the module follows the DOM Level 2 standard as close as possible. Consequently the API is fully object oriented. It is a good idea to have the DOM standard available when using this module. Though the API is object oriented there are many functions which can be called in a non-object oriented way by passing the object to operate on as the first argument. These function are mainly to retain compatibilty to older versions of the extension but are not encouraged to use anymore in new developments.
This API differs from the official DOM API in two points. First, all class attributes are implemented as functions with the same name and secondly the function names follow the PHP naming convention. This means that a DOM function lastChild() will be written as last_child().
This module defines a number of classes, which are listed — including their method — in the following tables. Classes with an equivalent in the DOM Standard are named DOMxxx.
Table 3. List of classes
| Class name | Parent classes |
|---|---|
| DomAttribute | DomNode |
| DomCData | DomNode |
| DomComment | DomCData : DomNode |
| DomDocument | DomNode |
| DomDocumentType | DomNode |
| DomElement | DomNode |
| DomEntity | DomNode |
| DomEntityReference | DomNode |
| DomProcessingInstruction | DomNode |
| DomText | DomCData : DomNode |
| Parser | Currently still called DomParser |
| XPathContext |
Table 4. DomDocument class (DomDocument : DomNode)
| Method name | Function name | Remark |
|---|---|---|
| doctype | DomDocument_doctype() | |
| document_elemnent | DomDocument_document_element() | |
| create_element | DomDocument_create_element() | |
| create_text_node | DomDocument_create_text_node() | |
| create_comment | DomDocument_create_comment() | |
| create_cdata_section | DomDocument_create_cdata_section() | |
| create_processing_instruction | DomDocument_create_processing_instruction() | |
| create_attribute | DomDocument_create_attribute() | |
| create_entity_reference | DomDocument_create_entity_reference() | |
| get_elements_by_tagname | DomDocument_get_elements_by_tagname() | |
| get_element_by_id | DomDocument_get_element_by_id() | |
| dump_mem | DomDocument_dump_mem() | not DOM standard |
| dump_file | DomDocument_dump_file() | not DOM standard |
| html_dump_mem | DomDocument_html_dump_mem() | not DOM standard |
| xpath_init | xpath_init | not DOM standard |
| xpath_new_context | xpath_new_context | not DOM standard |
| xptr_new_context | xptr_new_context | not DOM standard |
Table 5. DomElement class (DomElement : DomNode)
| Method name | Function name | Remark |
|---|---|---|
| tagname | DomElement_tagname() | |
| get_attribute | DomElement_get_attribute() | |
| set_attribute | DomElement_set_attribute() | |
| remove_attribute | DomElement_remove_attribute() | |
| get_attribute_node | DomElement_get_attribute_node() | |
| set_attribute_node | DomElement_set_attribute_node() | |
| get_elements_by_tagname | DomElement_get_elements_by_tagname() | |
| has_attribute | DomElement_has_attribute() |
Table 6. DomNode class
| Method name | Remark |
|---|---|
| DomNode_node_name() | |
| DomNode_node_value() | |
| DomNode_node_type() | |
| DomNode_last_child() | |
| DomNode_first_child() | |
| DomNode_child_nodes() | |
| DomNode_previous_sibling() | |
| DomNode_next_sibling() | |
| DomNode_parent_node() | |
| DomNode_owner_document() | |
| DomNode_insert_before() | |
| DomNode_append_child() | |
| DomNode_append_sibling() | Not in DOM standard. This function emulates the former behaviour of DomNode_append_child(). |
| DomNode_remove_child() | |
| DomNode_has_child_nodes() | |
| DomNode_has_attributes() | |
| DomNode_clone_node() | |
| DomNode_attributes() | |
| DomNode_unlink_node() | Not in DOM standard |
| DomNode_replace_node() | Not in DOM standard |
| DomNode_set_content() | Not in DOM standard, deprecated |
| DomNode_get_content() | Not in DOM standard, deprecated |
| DomNode_dump_node() | Not in DOM standard |
| DomNode_is_blank_node() | Not in DOM standard |
Table 7. DomAttribute class (DomAttribute : DomNode)
| Method name | Remark | |
|---|---|---|
| name | DomAttribute_name() | |
| value | DomAttribute_value() | |
| specified | DomAttribute_specified() |
Table 8. DomProcessingInstruction class (DomProcessingInstruction : DomNode)
| Method name | Function name | Remark |
|---|---|---|
| target | DomProcessingInstruction_target() | |
| data | DomProcessingInstruction_data() |
Table 10. XPathContext class
| Method name | Function name | Remark |
|---|---|---|
| eval | XPathContext_eval() | |
| eval_expression | XPathContext_eval_expression() | |
| register_ns | XPathContext_register_ns() |
Table 11. DomDocumentType class (DomDocumentType : DomNode)
| Method name | Function name | Remark |
|---|---|---|
| name | DomDocumentType_name() | |
| entities | DomDocumentType_entities() | |
| notations | DomDocumentType_notations() | |
| public_id | DomDocumentType_public_id() | |
| system_id | DomDocumentType_system_id() | |
| internal_subset | DomDocumentType_internal_subset() |
The classes DomDtd is derived from DomNode. DomComment is derived from DomCData
Many examples in this reference require a xml string. Instead of repeating this string in any example it will be put into a file and be included by each example. This include file is shown in the following example section. You could also create an xml document read it with DomDocument_open_file().