Showing posts with label DOM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DOM. Show all posts

2017-10-03

FluentDOM 7.0, The Next Step

FluentDOM 7.0 is out, so what has changed? Well, the FluentDOM namespace got a little crowded so I moved all the DOM child classes into FluentDOM\DOM, made the Creator a top level class and collected the utility classes. If you're updating you might need to change some imports. FluentDOM now requires PHP 7 and uses scalar type hints. In other words, lots of cleanup.

FluentDOM\XMLReader\SiblingIterator

Large XML files usually consist of a list element with many record elements as its children. The whole list is to large to load into memory, but the records are small enough.

The SiblingIterator takes a XMLReader, a tag name and a filter callback. It matches the tag name and executes the filter callback. If the tag name matches and the filter callback returns TRUE it will expand the node into DOM. After the first match it will only consider following siblings. This allows you to improve the read performance.

Here is an example that read a XML sitemap including video information.

$reader = new FluentDOM\XMLReader();
$reader->open($sitemapFile);
$reader->registerNamespace(
  's', 'http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9'
);
$reader->registerNamespace(
  'v', 'http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1'
);

foreach (new FluentDOM\XMLReader\SiblingIterator($reader, 's:url') as $url) {
  /** @var FluentDOM\DOM\Element $url */
  var_dump(
    [
      $url('string(v:video/v:title)'),
      $url('string(s:loc)')
    ]
  );
}

FluentDOM\XMLWriter::collapse()

FluentDOM 7.0 adds a collapse() method to XMLWriter. It is the missing opposite of XMLReader::expand(). Using the two methods allows you to work with large XML files in a really easy way.

The collapse() method takes any DOM node or node list and will write it to the output stream. You can use the extended DOM classes, FluentDOM\Creator or FluentDOM\Query to create the record node.

$writer = new FluentDOM\XMLWriter();
$writer->openURI('php://stdout');
$writer->registerNamespace(
  '', 'http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9'
);
$writer->registerNamespace(
  'video', 'http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1'
);

$writer->setIndent(2);
$writer->startDocument();
$writer->startElement('urlset');
$writer->writeAttribute(
  'xmlns:video', 'http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1'
);

$_ = FluentDOM::create();
$_->registerNamespace(
  '', 'http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9'
);
$_->registerNamespace(
  'video', 'http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1'
);

foreach ($videos as $video) {
  $writer->collapse(
    $_(
      'url',
      $_('loc', $video['url']),
      $_(
        'video:video',
        $_('video:title', $video['title'])
      )
    )
  );
}
$writer->endElement();
$writer->endDocument();

XMLWriter::setAttribute() recognizes if you write an namespace definition so it will not add it to descendant nodes.

Put Together

If you combine the expand iterator with collapse you can easily write mappers that can consume large XML files. You can basically use each record as a separate DOM document.

For example you can use it to merge XML documents and change the namespaces:

$writer = new \FluentDOM\XMLWriter();
$writer->openURI('php://stdout');
$writer->registerNamespace('p', 'urn:persons');
$writer->setIndent(2);
$writer->startDocument();
$writer->startElement('p:persons');

// iterate the example sources
foreach ($data as $sourceFile) {
  // load the source into a reader
  $reader = new \FluentDOM\XMLReader();
  $reader->open($sourceFile);

  // iterate the person elements
  $persons = new FluentDOM\XMLReader\SiblingIterator($reader, 'person');
  foreach ($persons as $person) {
    // use the transformer to move the nodes into the namespace
    $writer->collapse(
      new \FluentDOM\Transformer\Namespaces\Replace(
        $person,
        // namespaces to replace
        ['' => 'urn:persons', 'urn:example' => 'urn:persons'],
        // prefix for target namespace
        ['urn:persons' => 'p']
      )
    );
  }
}

$writer->endElement();
$writer->endDocument();

2017-07-02

FluentDOM 6.1 released - Improvements

Release: FluentDOM 6.1.0

MultiByte HTML

Thanks to some issues reported by Kyle Tse the multibyte handling for HTML was improved. It should now work properly. The HTML loader can read the encoding/charset from meta tags or you can specify as an loader option. The default is UTF-8. FluentDOM\Document::saveHTML() has got some additional logic as well.

XMLReader/XMLWriter

If you need to handle huge XML files, the XMLReader and XMLWriter APIs are the way to do it. Well you could try using SAX, but believe me THAT is no fun. XMLReader and XMLWriter are nice APIs by itself, so FluentDOM adds only slight changes for namespace handling.

XMLReader::read()/XMLReader::next()

Of the two traversing methods, only next() allows to specify a local name as a condition. FluentDOM extends the signature of both methods to allow for a tag name and a namespace URI. As a result the source reading an XML with namespaces can be simplified:

$sitemapUri = 'http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9';
$reader = new FluentDOM\XMLReader();
$reader->open($file);
if ($reader->read('url', $sitemapUri)) {
  do {
    //...
  } while ($reader->next('url', $sitemapUri));
}

XMLReader::registerNamespace()

Additionally you can register namespaces on the XMLReader object itself. This allows it resolve namespace prefixes in tag name arguments.

Namespace definitions will be propagated to an FluentDOM\Document instance created by FluentDOM\XMLReader::expand().

$reader = new FluentDOM\XMLReader();
$reader->open($file);
$reader->registerNamespace('s', 'http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9');
if ($reader->read('s:url')) {
  do {
    $url = $reader->expand();
    var_dump(
      $url('string(s:loc)')
    );
  } while ($reader->next('s:url'));
}

XMLWriter::registerNamespace()

The same registration is possible on an FluentDOM\XMLWriter. It keeps track track of the namespaces defined in the current context and avoid adding unnecessary definitions to the output (PHP Bug).

XMLWriter has many methods that have a tag name argument and this change allows all of them to become namespace aware.

$writer = new FluentDOM\XMLWriter();
$writer->openURI('php://stdout');
$writer->registerNamespace('', 'http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9');
$writer->setIndent(2);
$writer->startDocument();
$writer->startElement('urlset');

foreach ($urls as $url) {
  $writer->startElement('url');
  $writer->writeElement('loc', $url['href']);
  // ...
  $writer->endElement();
}

$writer->endElement();
$writer->endDocument();

2016-12-24

FluentDOM 6.0 - What's New

FluentDOM 6.0 is released.

So a major version jump means that here are backwards compatibility breaks and major new features. File loading has changed to improve security. FluentDOM\Query has got a major overhaul to improve the integration of alternative formats. This affected the interfaces and usage. I tried to keep the breaks to a minimum and easily fixable.

Loading Files

To load a file you will now have to explicitly allow it using the options argument. Here are two options. FluentDOM\Loader\Options::ALLOW_FILE basically restores the previous behaviour. The loader still checks if it is a file or string and will load both. FluentDOM\Loader\Options::IS_FILE means that only a file will be loaded. This has to be implemented into to respective loader. So if you notice that some loader behaves differently, please drop me a note.

All loading functions allow you to provide the option.

$fd = FluentDOM($file, 'xml', [ FluentDOM\Loader\Options::ALLOW_FILE => TRUE ]);
$document = FluentDOM::load(
  $file, 'xml', [ FluentDOM\Loader\Options::IS_FILE => TRUE ]
);

Fragment Loading / Query Content Types

Several loaders now support fragment loading. It is used by methods like FluentDOM\\Query::append(). It allows the Query API to keep the content type that you loaded. So if you load HTML, the fragment are expected to be html, if you load XML the fragments are expected to be XML, if you load JSON ... well you get the picture. :-)

$fd = FluentDOM('<form></form>', 'text/html')->find('//form');
$fd->append('<input type="text" name="example">');
echo $fd;

You can change the behaviour by setting the content type. It works with additional loaders, so if you install fluentdom/html5 you get transparent support for HTML5.

$fd = FluentDOM('<form></form>', 'text/html5')->find('//html:form');
$fd->append('<input type="text" name="example">');
echo $fd; 

The changes mean that all existing loaders need to be updated for FluentDOM 6.0.

Serializers

Serializers need to register itself on the FluentDOM class. It allows the FluentDOM\Query objects to output the same content type it loaded. Additionally you can use FluentDOM::getSerializerFactories()->createSerializer(); to get a serializer for a node by content type. I am thinking about adding something like a FluentDOM::save() function as a shortcut for that, but I am not sure about the name and implementation yet. If you have a suggestion please add it to the Issue.

Replace Whole Text

Character nodes (Text nodes and CDATA sections) have a property $wholeText. It returns the text content and the sibling character nodes. It even resolves entity references for that. The property is read only, but DOM Level 3 specifies a method replaceWholeText() as a write method for it. FluentDOM 6.0 implements that method in its extended DOM classes now.

$document = new FluentDOM\Document();
$document->loadXML(
  '<!DOCTYPE p ['."\n".
  '  <!ENTITY t "world">'."\n".
  ']>'."\n".
  '<p>Hello &t;<br/>, Hello &t;</p>'
);
/** @var \FluentDOM\Text $text */
$text = $document->documentElement->firstChild;
$text->replaceWholeText('Hi universe');
echo $document->saveXML();

Examples

The examples directory did grow a little confusing over the years. I restructured and refactored it. Some examples got removed, because the features are shown by newer examples.

What's Next?

I still have to updated some of the plugin repositories (loaders, serializers) and add some more documentation to the wiki. After that I plan to take a look into DOM Level 4. If you have suggestions please add a ticket to the issue tracker

2015-02-02

FluentDOM 5.2 - New Features

FluentDOM 5.2 is released and here some new features:

FluentDOM::load()

The new static FluentDOM::load() function allows to use the loaders to get a FluentDOM\Document instance.
$json = FluentDOM::load($json, 'text/json');
echo $json(
  'string(//phoneNumbers/*[type="home"]/number)'
);

DOM Living Standard


A large part of the DOM Living Standard is implemented. It adds properties like $element->firstElementChild and methods like $element->remove().

Query selectors are not implemented yet. Still thinking about that. If you have an opinion please add a comment to the issue.

Two New Loaders

Loader Plugins

It was already possible to use the loaders directly or to set the loaders for a FluentDOM\Query object. It is now possible to register them on the FluentDOM class. This makes them available to the FluentDOM() and FluentDOM::load() functions.

Additional packages like FluentDOM/HTML5 can register their loaders with specific content types. Just require the package with Composer and you're ready to go:
$dom = FluentDOM::load($html, 'text/html5');

FluentDOM\Query::find()

The behavior of find() has been changed to allow two modes. FIND_MODE_MATCH executes the selector directly. It should be faster and work better with XPath. FIND_MODE_FILTER filters the descendant nodes of the current context - like the jQuery documentation describes it.

2014-09-20

FluentDOM 5.1 - New Features

FluentDOM 5.1 is now available. Here are some of the highlights:

Functors 

The classes can now be called as functions to navigate in a DOM with XPath expressions. The following example fetches all link hrefs attributes from an HTML page:
$dom = new \FluentDOM\Document();
$dom->loadHTMLFile('http://fluentdom.org/');

$links = [];
foreach ($dom('//a[@href]/@href') as $href) {
  $links[] = (string)$href;
}


This works for most of the nodes in a DOM. 

Creator

The new Creator class provides short syntax to create DOM nodes. More detailed information can be found in the wiki.
$_ = FluentDOM::create();
echo $_(
  'ul',
  ['class' => 'navigation'],
  $_('li', 'FluentDOM')
);

XML To JSON

Several serializers/loaders for JSON where added. JSONML, Rayfish, BadgerFish and RabbitFish are supported.
echo "XML -> JsonML\n\n";
$json = json_encode(
  new FluentDOM\Serializer\Json\JsonML($dom), 
  JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
echo $json;

echo "\n\nJsonML -> XML\n\n";
echo FluentDOM(
  $json, 'application/jsonml+json')->formatOutput();

The Release

2010-05-09

Highlight Words In HTML

I got an interesting question on IRC recently. How can you highlight some words/word parts in an HTML document?

The Challenge

  • Wrap given words in text content with a span.
  • Add a class to the span depending on the word.
  • Do not touch elements, attributes, comments or processing instructions.
  • Do it case insensitive.
  • Do it the safe way.

Select The Text Content

Well this is the easy part. Get some FluentDOM object, find the part of the document to edit, select all text nodes in it.

$fd = FluentDOM($html, 'html')
  ->find('/html/body')
  ->find('descendant-or-self::text()');

I used two Xpath expressions because it are two steps. This way I can separate them later. In a single expression I could use the short syntax for the axis, shortening it to "/html/body//text()".

Loop

FluentDOM provides an "each()" method, expecting a callback for argument. The callback is executed for each node (in this case each text node). The first argument of the callback is the node itself.

$fd->each(
  function ($node) use ($check, $highlights) {
    ...
  }
);

Prepare The Words

$highlights = array(
  'word' => 'classNameOne',
  'word_two' => 'classNameTwo'
);

I need to check each node against the words and split it at the words. Is is a text value now, so the tool of choice are PCRE. To build a pattern from the words I sort them by length first, then loop, escape and concatinate them. The sorting is important if one word is part of another.

uksort(
  $highlights,
  function ($stringOne, $stringTwo) {
    $lengthOne = strlen($stringOne);
    $lengthTwo = strlen($stringTwo);
    if ($lengthOne > $lengthTwo) {
      return -1;
    } elseif ($lengthOne < $lengthTwo) {
      return 1;
    } else {
      return strcmp($stringOne, $stringTwo);
    }
  }
);
$check = '';
foreach ($highlights as $string => $class) {
  $check .= '|'.preg_quote(strtolower($string));
}
$check = '(('.substr($check, 1).'))iS';

Check And Divide

This pattern can now be used to check, as well to divide the text. A direct replace would be a bad idea, because I need to insert a new element node (the span). Creating nodes using the DOM functions takes care of any special chars.

if (preg_match($check, $node->nodeValue)) {
  $parts = preg_split(
    $check, $node->nodeValue, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE
  );
  ...
}

The option PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE puts the submatch into the $parts array, too. So it is possible to loop over all parts in their original order.

To Wrap Or Not To Wrap

The $parts array contains the words as well as the text around in separate strings. For each word, a span with the class is needed, all other become separate text nodes.

foreach ($parts as $part) {
  $string = strtolower($part);
  if (isset($highlights[$string])) {
    $span = $node
      ->ownerDocument
      ->createElement('span');
    $items[] = FluentDOM($span)
      ->addClass($highlights[$string])
      ->text($part)
      ->item(0);
  } else {
    $items[] = $node
      ->ownerDocument
      ->createTextNode($part);
  }
}

You now see the reason why I used lowercase versions of the words for keys in the $highlights array. It is easy to check if the $part is a word and get the class for the span.

Replace The Text

The last step is easy again, replace the node with the list of created ones.

FluentDOM($node)->replaceWith($items);

More

This is the basic solution and will only work with PHP 5.3, but I created another version defining a class. You can find the full source of the class example in the FluentDOM SVN at svn://svn.fluentdom.org in examples/tasks/highlightWords.php or on Gist.

2010-04-10

Using PHP DOM With XPath

Often I hear people say "We use SimpleXML, because DOM is so noisy and complex". Well, I don't think so. This article explains how you can parse a XML (an Atom feed) using the PHP DOM extension. No other libraries are involved.

Load the feed

To load the feed, you need to create an new DOMDocument document using it's load() method. This works with the PHP stream wrappers, so you can load local files or urls. DOMdocument, has dedicated methos for XML strings and HTML files and strings, too.

$feed = new DOMDocument();
$feed->load('http://www.a-basketful-of-papayas.net/feeds/posts/default');
...

If here is any problem with the resource, PHP will output error messages. You can use libxml_use_internal_errors() to block them. With libxml_clear_errors() the internal error list is cleared, libxml_get_errors() returns them so you could implemented you own error handling. Just ignore them for now:

$errorSetting = libxml_use_internal_errors(TRUE);
$feed = new DOMDocument();
$feed->load('http://www.a-basketful-of-papayas.net/feeds/posts/default');
libxml_clear_errors();
libxml_use_internal_errors($errorSetting);
...

In the next step you should check if you got some content. I use the documentElement property for this. If it is not here, the feed has to be invalid because any XML needs at least one element node.

if (isset($feed->documentElement)) {
  ...
} else {
  echo 'Invalid feed.';
}

Initialize XPath

Now a XPath object is needed to execute expressions. Atom feeds make use of namespaces, often declaring the atom namespace as default. But in XPath you have no default namespace, you need to register the namespace with an arbitrary prefix. It does not have to be the same prefix used in the XML file. It can't for the default namespace obviously because it has no prefix in the XML file.

...
$xpath = new DOMXPath($feed);
$xpath->registerNamespace('atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
...

If you load HTML into the DOMDocument using the special methods, all namespaces are ignored. You can skip the registration in this case.

Executing XPath Expressions

The DOMXPath object has two methods for executing xpath expressions. One is query(), it always returns a DOMNodelist. You should use the second one: evaluate(). It will return DOMNodelist objects by default, but depending on the expression it can return other types, too. With evaluate() you have direct access to the title text, it will return an empty string if the feed has no title.

The code selects the element nodes in the registered namespace and casts them to string.

...
echo $xpath->evaluate('string(/atom:feed/atom:title)'), "\n";
echo $xpath->evaluate('string(/atom:feed/atom:subtitle)'), "\n";
...

Next we will loop over all entries. A DOMNodelist works with foreach, the expression will return an empty list if it does not match, so no additional checking is needed. Inside the loop the entry node is used as a context argument for evaluate().

...
foreach ($xpath->evaluate('//atom:entry') as $entryNode) {
  echo $xpath->evaluate('string(atom:title)', $entryNode), "\n";
  echo $xpath->evaluate(
    'string(atom:link[@rel="alternate" and @type="text/html"][1]/@href)',
    $entryNode
    ), "\n";
  echo "\n";
}
...

Conditions

XPath expression can be conditions. It can be used to check if a entry has categories (tags). The return value of the following expression is a boolean value.

... if ($xpath->evaluate('count(atom:category) > 0', $entryNode)) { ... } ...

Loop over attributes

Each entry can have several categories. The title of the category is in it's attribute "term". You can select these attributes directly into a list.

echo 'Categories: ';
foreach ($xpath->evaluate('atom:category/@term', $entryNode) as $index => $categoryAttribute) {
  if ($index > 0) {
    echo ', ';
  }
  echo $categoryAttribute->value;
}
echo "\n";

Complete Example

Here is the full script. Be aware that it outputs text. If you execute it using a webserver (and not the command line), you should add a header('Content-Type: text/plain') to the top.

<?php
$errorSetting = libxml_use_internal_errors(TRUE);
$feed = new DOMDocument();
$feed->load('http://www.a-basketful-of-papayas.net/feeds/posts/default');
libxml_clear_errors();
libxml_use_internal_errors($errorSetting);

if (isset($feed->documentElement)) {
  $xpath = new DOMXPath($feed);
  $xpath->registerNamespace('atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
  echo $xpath->evaluate('string(/atom:feed/atom:title)'), "\n";
  echo $xpath->evaluate('string(/atom:feed/atom:subtitle)'), "\n";
  echo str_repeat('*', 72), "\n\n";
  foreach ($xpath->evaluate('//atom:entry') as $entryNode) {
    echo $xpath->evaluate('string(atom:title)', $entryNode), "\n";
    if ($xpath->evaluate('count(atom:category) > 0', $entryNode)) {
      echo 'Categories: ';
      foreach ($xpath->evaluate('atom:category/@term', $entryNode) as $index => $categoryAttribute) {
        if ($index > 0) {
          echo ', ';
        }
        echo $categoryAttribute->value;
      }
      echo "\n";
    }
    echo $xpath->evaluate(
      'string(atom:link[@rel="alternate" and @type="text/html"][1]/@href)',
      $entryNode
    ), "\n";
    echo "\n";
  }
} else {
  echo 'Invalid feed.';
}
?>

I hope, I could show you that DOM is really comfortable if you're using XPath. If you want it easier, try FluentDOM. It combines the power and comfort of XPath with the jQuery fluent interface.

2010-04-07

CSS Selectors And XPath Expressions

In this article I will try to show XPath expression counterparts for CSS selectors and explain some of the major differences. Most web developers are familiar with CSS selectors from creating webpages or using Javascript libraries like jQuery.

"Selectors are patterns that match against elements in a tree, and as such form one of several technologies that can be used to select nodes in an XML document. Selectors have been optimized for use with HTML and XML, and are designed to be usable in performance-critical code." - The W3C about CSS 3 selectors:

Here are two good reasons for using CSS selectors and not XPath expressions in the browser. You already know them from writing CSS files and XPath does not work in all browsers. IE supports it only on documents returned from a XHR or generated by XSLT in the browser.

On the server side the situation is different. In PHP XPath 1 is already implemented in the DOM extension. You don't need an additional library to use it. XPath is more specific and flexible. It is not only for selecting elements, but all kind of nodes and values. So how can you convert a CSS selector into an XPath expression?

A little sample HTML:

<html>
  <head></head>
  <body>
    <ul>
      <li class="first">Item One</li>
      <li>Item Two
        <ol>
          <li class="first last">SubItem One</li>
        </ol>
      </li>
      <li class="last">Item Three</li>
    </ul>
  </body>
</html>

Specific ancestor relationships

Let's say we need all li inside ul (but not ol). In CSS this whould be like "ul>li". The > is important. It defines that the li has to be a child of the ul. A simple "ul li" whould match the "SubItem One", too.

The XPath whould be "//ul/li". If the first char of an XPath expression is a slash the context of the expression is always the document. "/html" whould be the root element in the example. The double slash defines that any elements are allowed between the context and the match. The third slash defines the parent child relationship between ul and li. The expression "//ul//li" whould match the "SubItem One", too.

Multiple selectors/expressions

Both CSS selectors and XPath allow multiple selectors/expressions. You can use "," in CSS and "|" in XPath. Let's say we like to match all lists. In CSS selectors this whould be "ul,ol". XPath whould be "//ul|//ol". XPath always return unique nodes in document order, CSS selectors depend on the implementation.

Context

In CSS files context is not important, all selectors are defined for the document. But the context handling is one of the differences between CSS selectors and XPath.

CSS selectors match the current element like it's descendants. XPath has a specific handling for the current element. A dot can represent the current element in a XPath expression. In many cases the dot is optional. The expression "./li" does the same like "li" and matches only children of the current element. The CSS selector "li" whould match the current element if it would be a li and any li that has the current element as an ancestor. Translated to XPath this whould be "name()='li'|.//li". The XPath function name() allows to compare the tag name with a string.

Matching classes

CSS selector have special syntax for classes and token lists. A selector for a class is a dot followed by the class name. ".first" whould match two li elements from the sample html. The attribute selector "[class~=first]" whould do the same. Unfortunately XPath does not have a special syntax for token lists, but it can be emulated using XPath functions.

  1. Normalize the whitespaces in the class attribute to single spaces: normalize-space(@class)
  2. Add single spaces to the begin and end of the normalized attribute: concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' ')
  3. Check if the result contains the class name: contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' first ')
  4. Select all nodes matching the condition: //*[contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' first ')]

Namespaces

XPath has no default namespace, each selector without a namespaces matches only on elements that have no namespace. Namespace and tag name are separated with a colon ("html:div"). The * matches any element node in any namespace, but "*:div" is not possible.

CSS selectors have an universial selector, that can be an empty string or an asterisk. Namespace and tag name are separated using a pipe ("html|div"). "*|div" will match div tags in any namespace.

Overview: Short variants for namespace and element matches
Namespace Element XPath CSS
any any * empty string
none "div" div none
"html" "div" html:div html|div
any "div" *[local-name()='div'] div

Axes

Axes are a feature of XPath and not available in CSS selectors. The most selectors work like the "descendant-or-self" axis. This contains the current element and all children, children of the children and so on. The only exception are the sibling combinators.

The default axis in XPath is "child", which contains all children of the current element. A lot of the axes have a short syntax "." is the "self" axis, ".." the "parent" axis. The axis defines which group of nodes are matched.

To match all li in all namespaces the CSS selector whould be "li". In XPath we can use the "descendant-or-self" axis to simulate this. Because of the namespace the result whould be:

descendant-or-self::*[local-name() = 'li']

This can be combined with the class name check:

descendant-or-self::*[local-name() = 'li' and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' first ')]

Now I've shown that the CSS selector "li.first" is a lot easier then it's XPath expression counterpart :-). But this is the one to one translation of the CSS selector. It's something an automatic converter should generate. The namespace problem is not relevant, because if you load HTML, PHP ignores them and if you load XML you want to use them. An element in one namespace is not the same like in another - even if they have the same local name.

The token list matching (for classes) is something I need from time to time. But XML formats don't have class or similar attributes often.

I think any CSS selector can be converted into a XPath expression. The result might be large and/or complex but it should work.

Why use XPath?

Actually you can do a lot of things with XPath expressions that are not possible with CSS selectors and whould need you to program additional application logic. You can select text nodes, attributes or aggregate values directly.

But this article is already long enough so I will write more about that in another one.

2009-06-17

FluentDOM 1.0 Release

We just released FluentDOM 1.0. The package contains the two classes (FluentDOM and FluentDOMStyle) and a lot of examples.

FluentDOM is a test driven project. The tests are included in the package of course.

We decided to use The MIT License for the project. Test it, use it und please give us some feedback.

2009-06-13

FluentDOM.org

FluentDOM got an own webpage at http://fluentdom.org.

You can now find nightly builds at http://nightly.fluentdom.org. A PHPUnit log file and the code coverage report for the latest nightly build is provided, too.

Status Update

We added a FluentDOMStyle class. This class extends FluentDOM and adds support for manipulation of the style attributes.

$items = FluentDOMStyle($xhtml)->find('//div');
$items->css(
  array(
    'text-align' => 'center',
    'color' => 'black'
  )
);

2009-06-11

FluentDOM

Today I like to present a new projekt: FluentDOM

It provides an easy to use, jQuery like, fluent interface for DOMDocument.

The idea was born in a workshop of Tobias Schlitt about the PHP XML extensions at the IPC Spring in Berlin.

The last few days Bastian Feder and I implemented it. That's how it looks in action:

require_once('../FluentDOM.php');
echo FluentDOM($xml)
 ->node(
   FluentDOM($samples)
   ->find('//b[@id = "first"]')
   ->removeAttr('id')
   ->addClass('imported')
 )
 ->replaceAll('//p');

We are aware that here are some other projects with similiar concepts. But none of them matched our requirements (XML targeted, XPath selectors, namespace support, ...).

You can take a look at the current version in Bastian's public SVN.

svn://fluentdom.org/trunk/FluentDOM

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