How to delete element with DOMDocument?

Question

Is it possible to delete element from loaded DOM without creating a new one? For example something like this:

$dom = new DOMDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');
$dom->loadHTML($html);

foreach($dom->getElementsByTagName('a') as $href)
    if($href->nodeValue == 'First')
        //delete

Answer 1

You remove the node by telling the parent node to remove the child:

$href->parentNode->removeChild($href);

See DOMNode::$parentNode^Docs and DOMNode::removeChild()^Docs.

See as well:

• How to remove attributes using PHP DOMDocument?
• How to remove an HTML element using the DOMDocument class

Answer 2

This took me a while to figure out, so here's some clarification:

If you're deleting elements from within a loop (as in the OP's example), you need to loop backwards

$elements = $completePage->getElementsByTagName('a');
for ($i = $elements->length; --$i >= 0; ) {
  $href = $elements->item($i);
  $href->parentNode->removeChild($href);
}

DOMNodeList documentation: You can modify, and even delete, nodes from a DOMNodeList if you iterate backwards

Answer 3

Easily:

$href->parentNode->removeChild($href);