PHP DomXPath to find nested element value

Question

I'm using the PHP DOM to extract data from a page and having a hard time getting the href value for a nested element using DomXPath.

Here's my html:

<span class="myclass">
    <a href="/relative/path">My Value</a>
    <span class="otherclass"></span>
</span>

And here's my XPath query:

$xpath = new DomXPath($dom);
$classname = "myclass";
$nodes = $xpath->query("//span[contains(@class, '$classname')]");

foreach ($nodes as $node){
    echo $node->nodeValue;
    echo ",";
    echo $node->getAttribute('href');
    echo "<br>";
}

I'm able to get the nodeValue just fine ('My Value'), but not the value of the href. I'm sure I'm missing something and not understanding this. Do I need a separate query to get the href value? What's the best way to do this?

Answer 1

In your loop, $node is the span because your XPath is selecting span elements with the given class, that's why it doesn't have a href .

If you want to select the anchor that is under the span, change to:

$nodes = $xpath->query("//span[contains(@class, '$classname')]/a");