PHP DomDocument selectors like jQuery.. does exist something like that?

Question

Hi guys, im pretty new to the PHP DomDocument, im reading the documentation right now and im wondering is does exixts some selectors like the ones we seen in jquery.

Well, i exmplain my situation: i have this xml file to parse every day and update a database:

Europe Bank Money Currency

That's a little snapshot:

<gesmes:Envelope>
    <gesmes:subject>Reference rates</gesmes:subject>
    <gesmes:Sender>
        <gesmes:name>European Central Bank</gesmes:name>
    </gesmes:Sender>
    <Cube>
        <Cube time="2009-07-13">
            <Cube currency="USD" rate="1.3975"/>
            <Cube currency="JPY" rate="129.03"/>
            <Cube currency="BGN" rate="1.9558"/>
            <Cube currency="CZK" rate="26.028"/>
        </Cube>
    </Cube>
</gesmes:Envelope>

so, accessing this structure with jquery-like selectors will be dead simple:

$("Cube[currency]")

and i'll retrieve all the elements 'cube' with the 'currency' attribute.

But how to do that with PHP Domdocument? How to search the elements by attribute and/or attribute value?

I only saw the getElementsByTagName and getElementsById methods.

p.s: i gave a look to xpath too, but dont seem to work with DomDocument

Answer 1

XPath is exactly what you are looking for, here is pretty good list of possible selectors

Answer 2

Take a look at the DOMXPath class in PHP.
//cube[@currency] would select all elements with currency attribute.

Answer 3

If you want to manipulate the DOM ala Jquery, PHPQuery is something for you.

http://code.google.com/p/phpquery/

A simple example of what you can do with it.

// almost everything can be a chain
$li = null;
$doc['ul > li']
        ->addClass('my-new-class')
        ->filter(':last')
                ->addClass('last-li');