How can DOMDocument and XPath be used to Target and Extract Specific Text Content from HTML?

DOMDocument Parsing for Targeting Specific Content

Using "DOMDocument", a powerful PHP library, allows for precise parsing of HTML documents. Unlike "getElementsByTagName", which retrieves all tags with a specific name, this method utilizes XPath queries to effectively target desired elements.

Capture Text Nodes within Specific Contexts

To extract specific text content, the process involves:

• Loading the HTML string into a DOM object using "DOMDocument::loadHTML".
• Initiating an "XPath" object using "new DOMXPath($dom)".
• Employing an XPath query which specifies the target nodes. For instance:

$tags = $xpath->query('//div[@class="main"]/div[@class="text"]');

This query retrieves all

foreach ($tags as $tag) {
    var_dump(trim($tag->nodeValue));
}

<code class="html"><div class="main">
    <div class="text">
    Capture this text 1
    </div>
</div>

<div class="main">
    <div class="text">
    Capture this text 2
    </div>
</div></code>

string 'Capture this text 1' (length=19)
string 'Capture this text 2' (length=19)