PHP5: Find Root Node in DOMDocument

Question

I have a PHP5 DOMDocument and I try to find the root node (not the root element).

Example:

<test>
    <element>
        <bla1>x</bla1>
        <bla2>x</bla2>
    </element>
    <element>
        <bla1>y</bla1>
        <bla2>y</bla2>
    </element>
    <element>
        <bla1>z</bla1>
        <bla2>z</bla2>
    </element>
</test>

I want to get the DOMNode of "test" so that I can call - for example - hasChildNodes. I can get the "documentElement", but that's a DOMElement. Maybe I can go from there?

$d = DOMDocument::loadXML($xml);
// [... do some stuff here to find document's root node ...]
if ($rootnode->hasChildNodes()) echo 'yayy!'

Who can fill the gap? I seem to be blind.

(Obviously it's not only hasChildNodes I want to call - so NO, it doesn't help to find another method to find out if the document contains stuff. That's just for my simple example. I need a DOMNode at the end.)

Solution 1

According to the PHP docs DOMElement is a subclass of DOMNode, so it should inherit the hasChildNodes()-method.

Solution 2

DOMElement extends DOMNode.

You get the Root DOMElement by $d->documentElement.

Solution 3

DOM Model- The W3C has broken down the DOM into a tree structure of nodes of varying types. The Node interface is the base interface for all elements. All objects implementing this interface expose methods for dealing with children.

$dom=new DomDocument;
$dom->Load("file.xml");
$root=$dom->documentElement; // Root node

Comments

[Nishan]

Hmmm, okay, that's actually true... And if I don't send my ->documentElement to a function, everything seems to work correctly... The function call looses something on it's way... Now on to find that...

[Angel.King.47]

This should actually be the ticked answer!

[gawpertron]

here is the documentation for this property php.net/manual/en/…

[Ben]

I'll save someone a click. The above documentation says: This is a convenience attribute that allows direct access to the child node that is the document element of the document.