PHP DOM: parsing a HTML list into an array?

dom, html-parsing, php, php-5.3

Solution

Pass the node to `DOMDocument::saveHTML` to get its HTML representation:

$string = '
<a href="#" class="something">1</a>
<a href="#" class="something">2</a>
<a href="#" class="something">3</a>
<a href="#" class="something">4</a>
';

$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->loadHTML($string);
foreach($dom->getElementsByTagName('a') as $node)
{
    $array[] = $dom->saveHTML($node);
}

print_r($array);

Result:

Array
(
    [0] => <a href="#" class="something">1</a>
    [1] => <a href="#" class="something">2</a>
    [2] => <a href="#" class="something">3</a>
    [3] => <a href="#" class="something">4</a>
)

Only works with PHP 5.3.6 and higher, by the way.

Problem

I have the below HTML string, and I would like to turn it into an array. ``` $string = ' <a href="#" class="something">1</a> <a href="#" class="something">2</a> <a href="#" class="something">3</a> <a href="#" class="something">4</a> '; ``` Here's my current code with `DOMDocument`: ``` $dom = new DOMDocument; $dom->loadHTML($string); foreach( $dom->getElementsByTagName('a') as $node) { $array[] = $node->nodeValue; } print_r($array); ``` However, this gives the below output: ``` Array ( [0] => 1 [1] => 2 [2] => 2 [3] => 4) ``` But I am looking for this result: ``` Array ( [0] => <a href="#" class="something">1</a> [1] => <a href="#" class="something">2</a> [2] => <a href="#" class="something">3</a> [3] => <a href="#" class="something">4</a> ) ``` Is this possible?

Original source