Modify html attribute with php

Question

I have a html string that contains exactly one a-element in it. Example:

 <a href="http://www.test.com" rel="nofollow external">test</a>

In php I have to test if rel contains external and if yes, then modify href and save the string.

I have looked for DOM nodes and objects. But they seem to be too much for only one A-element, as I have to iterate to get html nodes and I am not sure how to test if rel exists and contains external.

$html = new DOMDocument(); $html->loadHtml($txt); $a = $html->getElementsByTagName('a'); $attr = $a->item(0)->attributes(); ...

At this point I am going to get NodeMapList that seems to be overhead. Is there any simplier way for this or should I do it with DOM?

When dealing with DOM you have two options: 1) use native DOM parser 2) Use regular expression (which is overhead) — Yang
– Yang, Commented Apr 21, 2013 at 1:47
Nobody should use the raw DOM methods for manipulation. Consider phpQuery or QueryPath etc. to reduce tedious boilerplate. — mario
– mario, Commented Apr 21, 2013 at 1:48

Community · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-21 15:19:59Z

13

Is there any simplier way for this or should I do it with DOM?

Do it with DOM.

Here's an example:

<?php $html = '<a href="http://example.com" rel="nofollow external">test</a>'; $dom = new DOMDocument; $dom->loadHTML($html); $xpath = new DOMXPath($dom); $nodes = $xpath->query("//a[contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@rel), ' '), ' external ')]"); foreach($nodes as $node) { $node->setAttribute('href', 'http://example.org'); } echo $dom->saveHTML();

edited Feb 21, 2016 at 15:19

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answered Apr 22, 2013 at 5:12

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3 Comments

Marcin Jaworski Over a year ago

$dom->saveHTML(); This method, as of 5.2.6, will automatically add <html><body> and <!DOCTYPE> tags to the document if they are missing, without asking whether you want them.

mickmackusa Over a year ago

Some query explanation would be beneficial to researchers.

Illya Moskvin Over a year ago

@MarcinJaworski Thanks for the heads up – looks like the fix is to pass some flags to loadHtml: stackoverflow.com/questions/4879946/…

Giacomo1968 · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-01 16:47:40Z

I kept going to modify with DOM. This is what I get:

$html = new DOMDocument(); $html->loadHtml('<?xml encoding="utf-8" ?>' . $txt); $nodes = $html->getElementsByTagName('a'); foreach ($nodes as $node) { foreach ($node->attributes as $att) { if ($att->name == 'rel') { if (strpos($att->value, 'external')) { $node->setAttribute('href','modified_url_goes_here'); } } } } $txt = $html->saveHTML();

I did not want to load any other library for just this one string.

HamZa · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-21 02:25:02Z

The best way is to use a HTML parser/DOM, but here's a regex solution:

$html = '<a href="http://www.test.com" rel="nofollow external">test</a><br> <p> Some text</p> <a href="http://test.com">test2</a><br> <a rel="external">test3</a> <-- This won\'t work since there is no href in it. '; $new = preg_replace_callback('/<a.+?rel\s*=\s*"([^"]*)"[^>]*>/i', function($m){ if(strpos($m[1], 'external') !== false){ $m[0] = preg_replace('/href\s*=\s*(("[^"]*")|(\'[^\']*\'))/i', 'href="http://example.com"', $m[0]); } return $m[0]; }, $html); echo $new;

Online demo.

anthonybell · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-21 01:54:53Z

You could use a regular expression like if it matches /\s+rel\s*=\s*".*external.*"/ then do a regExp replace like /(<a.*href\s*=\s*")([^"]\)("[^>]*>)/\1[your new href here]\3/

Though using a library that can do this kind of stuff for you is much easier (like jquery for javascript)

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