PHP DOMDocument GetElementsByTagName Not Finding Elements

Question

I have an HTML page containing alot of meta tags and I want to parse them to find certain ones. Here is the code I am using, but it's not picking up any of the tags.

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$dom->loadHtml($contents);
$metaChildren = $dom->getElementsByTagName('meta');
var_dump($metaChildren);

Here is a snippet of the HTML I am using (I replaced the arrow with a brace):

[meta name="GZPlatform" content=" pc"]
[meta name="GZFeatured" content=" Gone Gold"]
[meta name="GZHeadline" content=" pc"]
[meta name="GZP_ID" content=" pc 21153"]


Any Ideas?

Answer 1

My guess would be that the HTML is not valid and that the $dom->loadHtml call is failing. I believe that call returns true|false. So maybe something like this:

if($dom->loadHtml($contents)){
    $metaChildren = $dom->getElementsByTagName('meta');
}else{
    //handle properly
}

Answer 2

Use the PHP Simple DOM Library

Answer 3

Are you sure the tags aren't being matched? What is the output of var_dump? What value do you get when you use var_dump($metaChildren->length)? Your code seems to work here:

<?
$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$dom->loadHtmlFile('test.html');
$metaChildren = $dom->getElementsByTagName('meta');
for ($i = 0; $i < $metaChildren->length; $i++) {
  $el = $metaChildren->item($i);
  print $el->getAttribute('name') . '=' . $el->getAttribute('content') . "\n";
}
?>

Gives output:

GZPlatform= pc
GZFeatured= Gone Gold
GZHeadline= pc
GZP_ID= pc 21153

Answer 4

COuld it be that the parser expects you to close the meta tags?

<meta name="name" />

or

<meta name="name"></meta>

Answer 5

I think I remember getting unexpected results with var_dump on DOM objects. See John's answer.