PHP - Get HTML Source and read elements

[tapaskaro]

Hi,

 

I am very new to PHP and trying to read elements of an HTML page.

 

I was able to do below

 

    global $phpname;
    
    $episodePage = file_get_contents($htmlpage);
    
    $dom = new DOMDocument();
    $dom->loadHTML($episodePage);   

However, from the $dom, I want to read a particular element (with ID = XXXXXXXXXXX). I want to get the entire HTML code inside that element.

 

I know that there is function called $dom ->getElementsByTagName(" ").

 

I also  tried $dom->getElementById("XXXXXXXX") but this wont' give me anything.

 

Any idea, how to get the actual HTML source for that entire HTML element. 

 

Any help would really appreciate.

 

[requinix]

getElementById() is what your next step will be, but as its name says it gets you an element - not an HTML string.

 

Get the element, then pass it to $dom's saveHTML to get the HTML string.

[rhodesa]

Also be aware, for this to work, the HTML content needs to be 100% valid. The majority of webpages on the internet are NOT valid HTML.

[cyberRobot]

Also be aware, for this to work, the HTML content needs to be 100% valid. The majority of webpages on the internet are NOT valid HTML.

 

I'm not sure if that's true... The following comes from the online documentation for loadHTML():

Unlike loading XML, HTML does not have to be well-formed to load.

[requinix]

Unless you trust the HTML to be reasonably valid, it'd probably a good idea to run it through something like Tidy first. Just in case.