php - xpath finding absolute path is there any easy way?

Question

I have tried to find a way to "bookmark" an element on a page so i will later on be able to check on it. everything I've tried so far lead me to some problem so I've came to the conclusion that finding the absolute path might be the only way.

I am new to xpath or DOMdocument in general so i might have the naming wrong however by absolute path i mean something like:

"/html/body/div[1]/div[1]/div[2]/span[2]"

lets say i use:

$element_with_something = $xpath->query('(//*[text()= "something"])');

This gave me an element. now my question is there an easy way of finding it's absolute path. if not. then i will probably have to recursion my way up the tree.

if so how can i check if an element has a parent?

I know i can use hasChildNodes() to find child but is there a way to find out if there is a parent ? or any other way to break the recursion ones it hit the top of the tree ?

Answer 1

You might be looking for DOMNode::getNodePath(). A quick example:

$xml = <<<XML
<blaah1 name="whatever">
    <gender name="male">

        <example1 baseurl="male/86644/">
            <x u="lol.png"/>
            <x u="haha.png"/>
            <x u="name.png"/>
        </example1>

        <example2 baseurl="male/27827/">
            <x u="page.png"/>
            <x u="examp.png"/>
            <x u="bottom.png"/>
        </example2>
    </gender>
</blaah1>
XML;

$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadXML($xml);
$xp = new DOMXPath($doc);
foreach($xp->query('//node()') as $node ) {

    echo $node->getNodePath(), "
";

}

And it's output:

/blaah1
/blaah1/text()[1]
/blaah1/gender
/blaah1/gender/text()[1]
/blaah1/gender/example1
/blaah1/gender/example1/text()[1]
/blaah1/gender/example1/x[1]
/blaah1/gender/example1/text()[2]
/blaah1/gender/example1/x[2]
/blaah1/gender/example1/text()[3]
/blaah1/gender/example1/x[3]
/blaah1/gender/example1/text()[4]
/blaah1/gender/text()[2]
/blaah1/gender/example2
/blaah1/gender/example2/text()[1]
/blaah1/gender/example2/x[1]
/blaah1/gender/example2/text()[2]
/blaah1/gender/example2/x[2]
/blaah1/gender/example2/text()[3]
/blaah1/gender/example2/x[3]
/blaah1/gender/example2/text()[4]
/blaah1/gender/text()[3]
/blaah1/text()[2]