Remove a child with a specific attribute in SimpleXML for PHP

Question

I have several identical elements with different attributes that I m accessing with SimpleXML    lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt       lt seg id  A12   gt       lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt    I need to remove a specific seg element  with an id of  A12   how can I do this   I ve tried looping through the seg elements and unsetting the specific one  but this doesn t work  the elements remain   foreach  doc- gt seg as  seg        if  seg  id       A12                 unset  seg

User · Answer

I believe Stefan s answer is right on  If you want to remove only one node  rather than all matching nodes   here is another example     Load XML from file  or it could come from a POST  etc    xml   simplexml load file  fileName xml       Use XPath to find target node for removal  target    xml- gt xpath    seg  id  uniqueIdToDelete        If target does not exist  already deleted by someone thing else   halt if   target  return    Returns null    Import simpleXml reference into Dom  amp  do removal  removal occurs in simpleXML object   domRef   dom import simplexml  target 0      Select position 0 in XPath array  domRef- gt parentNode- gt removeChild  domRef      Format XML to save indented tree rather than one line and save  dom   new DOMDocument  1 0     dom- gt preserveWhiteSpace   false   dom- gt formatOutput   true   dom- gt loadXML  xml- gt asXML      dom- gt save  fileName xml      Note that sections Load XML     first  and Format XML     last  could be replaced with different code depending on where your XML data comes from and what you want to do with the output  it is the sections in between that find a node and remove it    In addition  the if statement is only there to ensure that the target node exists before trying to move it  You could choose different ways to handle or ignore this case

User · Answer

Just unset the node    str    lt  lt  lt STR  lt a gt     lt b gt       lt c gt       lt  c gt     lt  b gt   lt  a gt  STR    xml   simplexml load string  str   unset  xml     gt  a     gt  b     gt  c      this would remove node c echo  xml     gt  asXML       xml document string without node c   This code was taken from How to delete   remove nodes in SimpleXML

User · Answer

While SimpleXML provides a way to remove XML nodes  its modification capabilities are somewhat limited  One other solution is to resort to using the DOM extension  dom import simplexml   will help you with converting your SimpleXMLElement into a DOMElement   Just some example code  tested with PHP 5 2 5     data   lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt       lt seg id  A12   gt       lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt     doc new SimpleXMLElement  data   foreach  doc- gt seg as  seg        if  seg  id       A12              dom dom import simplexml  seg            dom- gt parentNode- gt removeChild  dom           echo  doc- gt asXml      outputs   lt  xml version  1 0   gt   lt data gt  lt seg id  A1   gt  lt seg id  A5   gt  lt seg id  A29   gt  lt seg id  A30   gt  lt  data gt    By the way  selecting specific nodes is much more simple when you use XPath  SimpleXMLElement- xpath      segs  doc- gt xpath    seq  id  A12      if  count  segs  gt  1         seg  segs 0        same deletion procedure as above

User · Answer

There is a way to remove a child element via SimpleXml  The code looks for a   element  and does nothing   Otherwise it adds the element to a string   It then writes out the string to a file   Also note that the code saves a backup before overwriting the original file    username     GET  delete account    echo  DELETING     username   xml   simplexml load file  users xml      str     lt  xml version   1 0    gt   lt users gt    foreach  xml- gt children   as  child     if  child- gt getName       user           if  username     child  name              continue        else            str    str  child- gt asXML                 str    str    lt  users gt    echo  str    xml- gt asXML  users backup xml     myFile    users xml    fh   fopen  myFile   w   or die  can t open file    fwrite  fh   str   fclose  fh

User · Answer

There is a way to remove a child element via SimpleXml  The code looks for a   element  and does nothing   Otherwise it adds the element to a string   It then writes out the string to a file   Also note that the code saves a backup before overwriting the original file    username     GET  delete account    echo  DELETING     username   xml   simplexml load file  users xml      str     lt  xml version   1 0    gt   lt users gt    foreach  xml- gt children   as  child     if  child- gt getName       user           if  username     child  name              continue        else            str    str  child- gt asXML                 str    str    lt  users gt    echo  str    xml- gt asXML  users backup xml     myFile    users xml    fh   fopen  myFile   w   or die  can t open file    fwrite  fh   str   fclose  fh

User · Answer

Your initial approach was right  but you forgot one little thing about foreach  It doesn t work on the original array object  but creates a copy of each element as it iterates  so you did unset the copy  Use reference like this   foreach  doc- gt seg as  amp  seg         if  seg  id       A12                 unset  seg

User · Answer

A new idea  simple xml works as a array   We can search for the indexes of the  array  we want to delete  and then  use the unset   function to delete this array indexes  My example    pos  this- gt xml- gt getXMLUser     i 0   array pos array    foreach  this- gt xml- gt doc- gt users- gt usr  pos - gt u cfg root- gt profiles- gt profile as  profile        if  profile- gt p timestamp   0      array pos    i         i        print r  array pos   for  i 0  i lt count  array pos   i          unset  this- gt xml- gt doc- gt users- gt usr  pos - gt u cfg root- gt profiles- gt profile  array pos  i

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To remove keep nodes with certain attribute value or falling into array of attribute values you can extend SimpleXMLElement class like this  most recent version in my GitHub Gist    class SimpleXMLElementExtended extends SimpleXMLElement                     Removes or keeps nodes with given attributes              param string  attributeName        param array  attributeValues        param bool  keep TRUE keeps nodes and removes the rest  FALSE removes nodes and keeps the rest         return integer Number o affected nodes              example   xml- gt o- gt filterAttribute  id    products ids      Keeps only nodes with id attr in  products ids        see  http   stackoverflow com questions 17185959 simplexml-remove-nodes            public function filterAttribute  attributeName        attributeValues   array     keepNodes   TRUE                        nodesToRemove   array             foreach  this as  node                         attributeValue    string  node  attributeName                if   keepNodes                                if   in array  attributeValue   attributeValues    nodesToRemove      node                            else                                if  in array  attributeValue   attributeValues    nodesToRemove      node                                    result   count  nodesToRemove            foreach   nodesToRemove as  node                unset  node 0                       return  result            Then having your  doc XML you can remove your  lt seg id  A12   gt  node calling    data   lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt       lt seg id  A12   gt       lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt      doc new SimpleXMLElementExtended  data    doc- gt seg- gt filterAttribute  id     A12    FALSE     or remove multiple  lt seg   gt  nodes    doc- gt seg- gt filterAttribute  id     A1    A12    A29    FALSE     For keeping only  lt seg id  A5   gt  and  lt seg id  A30   gt  nodes and removing the rest    doc- gt seg- gt filterAttribute  id     A5    A30    TRUE

User · Answer

While SimpleXML provides a way to remove XML nodes  its modification capabilities are somewhat limited  One other solution is to resort to using the DOM extension  dom import simplexml   will help you with converting your SimpleXMLElement into a DOMElement   Just some example code  tested with PHP 5 2 5     data   lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt       lt seg id  A12   gt       lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt     doc new SimpleXMLElement  data   foreach  doc- gt seg as  seg        if  seg  id       A12              dom dom import simplexml  seg            dom- gt parentNode- gt removeChild  dom           echo  doc- gt asXml      outputs   lt  xml version  1 0   gt   lt data gt  lt seg id  A1   gt  lt seg id  A5   gt  lt seg id  A29   gt  lt seg id  A30   gt  lt  data gt    By the way  selecting specific nodes is much more simple when you use XPath  SimpleXMLElement- xpath      segs  doc- gt xpath    seq  id  A12      if  count  segs  gt  1         seg  segs 0        same deletion procedure as above

User · Answer

Idea about helper functions is from one of the comments for DOM on php net and idea about using unset is from kavoir com  For me this solution finally worked       function Myunset  node     unsetChildren  node     parent    node- gt parentNode   unset  node      function unsetChildren  node     while  isset  node- gt firstChild       unsetChildren  node- gt firstChild    unset  node- gt firstChild          using it   xml is SimpleXmlElement  Myunset  xml- gt channel- gt item  i      The result is stored in  xml  so don   t worry about assigning it to any variable

User · Answer

Contrary to popular belief in the existing answers  each Simplexml element node can be removed from the document just by itself and unset    The point in case is just that you need to understand how SimpleXML actually works   First locate the element you want to remove   list  element     doc- gt xpath     seg  id  A12        Then remove the element represented in  element you unset its self-reference   unset  element 0      This works because the first element of any element is the element itself in Simplexml  self-reference   This has to do with its magic nature  numeric indices are representing the elements in any list  e g  parent- children   and even the single child is such a list   Non-numeric string indices represent attributes  in array-access  or child-element s   in property-access    Therefore numeric indecies in property-access like   unset  element- gt  0      work as well   Naturally with that xpath example  it is rather straight forward  in PHP 5 4    unset  doc- gt xpath     seg  id  A12     0  0      The full example code  Demo     lt  php        Remove a child with a specific attribute  in SimpleXML for PHP     link http   stackoverflow com a 16062633 367456       data  lt  lt  lt DATA  lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt       lt seg id  A12   gt       lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt  DATA     doc   new SimpleXMLElement  data    unset  doc- gt xpath  seg  id  A12     0 - gt  0      doc- gt asXml  php   output      Output    lt  xml version  1 0   gt   lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt        lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt

User · Answer

Even though SimpleXML doesn t have a detailed way to remove elements  you can remove elements from SimpleXML by using PHP s unset    The key to doing this is managing to target the desired element  At least one way to do the targeting is using the order of the elements  First find out the order number of the element you want to remove  for example with a loop   then remove the element    target   false   i   0  foreach   xml- gt seg as  s      if   s  id     A12      target    i  break       i      if   target     false      unset  xml- gt seg  target        You can even remove multiple elements with this  by storing the order number of target items in an array  Just remember to do the removal in a reverse order  array reverse  targets    because removing an item naturally reduces the order number of the items that come after it   Admittedly  it s a bit of a hackaround  but it seems to work fine

User · Answer

I believe Stefan s answer is right on  If you want to remove only one node  rather than all matching nodes   here is another example     Load XML from file  or it could come from a POST  etc    xml   simplexml load file  fileName xml       Use XPath to find target node for removal  target    xml- gt xpath    seg  id  uniqueIdToDelete        If target does not exist  already deleted by someone thing else   halt if   target  return    Returns null    Import simpleXml reference into Dom  amp  do removal  removal occurs in simpleXML object   domRef   dom import simplexml  target 0      Select position 0 in XPath array  domRef- gt parentNode- gt removeChild  domRef      Format XML to save indented tree rather than one line and save  dom   new DOMDocument  1 0     dom- gt preserveWhiteSpace   false   dom- gt formatOutput   true   dom- gt loadXML  xml- gt asXML      dom- gt save  fileName xml      Note that sections Load XML     first  and Format XML     last  could be replaced with different code depending on where your XML data comes from and what you want to do with the output  it is the sections in between that find a node and remove it    In addition  the if statement is only there to ensure that the target node exists before trying to move it  You could choose different ways to handle or ignore this case

User · Answer

Your initial approach was right  but you forgot one little thing about foreach  It doesn t work on the original array object  but creates a copy of each element as it iterates  so you did unset the copy  Use reference like this   foreach  doc- gt seg as  amp  seg         if  seg  id       A12                 unset  seg

User · Answer

If you extend the base SimpleXMLElement class  you can use this method   class MyXML extends SimpleXMLElement        public function find  xpath             tmp    this- gt xpath  xpath           return isset  tmp 0     tmp 0   null             public function remove              dom   dom import simplexml  this           return  dom- gt parentNode- gt removeChild  dom                Example  removing the  lt bar gt  element with id   1  foo   new MyXML   lt foo gt  lt bar id  1   gt  lt bar id  2   gt  lt  foo gt      foo- gt find    bar  id  1    - gt remove    print  foo- gt asXML        lt foo gt  lt bar id  2   gt  lt  foo gt

User · Answer

For future reference  deleting nodes with SimpleXML can be a pain sometimes  especially if you don t know the exact structure of the document  That s why I have written SimpleDOM  a class that extends SimpleXMLElement to add a few convenience methods   For instance  deleteNodes   will delete all nodes matching a XPath expression  And if you want to delete all nodes with the attribute  id  equal to  A5   all you have to do is      don t forget to include SimpleDOM php include  SimpleDOM php       use simpledom load string   instead of simplexml load string    data   simpledom load string        lt data gt           lt seg id  A1   gt           lt seg id  A5   gt           lt seg id  A12   gt           lt seg id  A29   gt           lt seg id  A30   gt       lt  data gt          and there the magic happens  data- gt deleteNodes    seg  id  A5

User · Answer

There is a way to remove a child element via SimpleXml  The code looks for a   element  and does nothing   Otherwise it adds the element to a string   It then writes out the string to a file   Also note that the code saves a backup before overwriting the original file    username     GET  delete account    echo  DELETING     username   xml   simplexml load file  users xml      str     lt  xml version   1 0    gt   lt users gt    foreach  xml- gt children   as  child     if  child- gt getName       user           if  username     child  name              continue        else            str    str  child- gt asXML                 str    str    lt  users gt    echo  str    xml- gt asXML  users backup xml     myFile    users xml    fh   fopen  myFile   w   or die  can t open file    fwrite  fh   str   fclose  fh

User · Answer

Since I encountered the same fatal error as Gerry and I m not familiar with DOM  I decided to do it like this    item    xml- gt xpath    seg  id  A12       page    xml- gt xpath   data     id    A12    if    count  item    amp  amp   count  page           item    item 0        page    page 0            find the numerical index within - gt children         ch    page- gt children         ch as array    array   ch       if    count  ch as array    amp  amp   isset  ch as array  seg                  ch as array    ch as array  seg             index in array   array search  item   ch as array           if      index in array     false             amp  amp     index in array     null             amp  amp   isset  ch  index in array              amp  amp     ch  index in array   id       id                        delete it              unset  ch  index in array                 echo   lt pre gt    var dump  xml   echo   lt  pre gt                        end of   if xml object successfully converted to array         end of   valid item  AND  section

User · Answer

With FluidXML you can use XPath to select the elements to remove    doc   fluidify  doc     doc- gt remove       id  A12        https   github com servo-php fluidxml    The XPath      id  A12   means    in any point of the document      every node     with the attribute id equal to A12    id  A12

User · Answer

This work for me    data     lt data gt   lt seg id  A1   gt   lt seg id  A5   gt   lt seg id  A12   gt   lt seg id  A29   gt   lt seg id  A30   gt  lt  data gt      doc   new SimpleXMLElement  data     segarr    doc- gt seg    count   count  segarr     j   0   for   i   0   i  lt   count   i           if   segarr  j   id       A12             unset  segarr  j             j    j - 1             j    j   1     echo  doc- gt asXml

User · Answer

To remove keep nodes with certain attribute value or falling into array of attribute values you can extend SimpleXMLElement class like this  most recent version in my GitHub Gist    class SimpleXMLElementExtended extends SimpleXMLElement                     Removes or keeps nodes with given attributes              param string  attributeName        param array  attributeValues        param bool  keep TRUE keeps nodes and removes the rest  FALSE removes nodes and keeps the rest         return integer Number o affected nodes              example   xml- gt o- gt filterAttribute  id    products ids      Keeps only nodes with id attr in  products ids        see  http   stackoverflow com questions 17185959 simplexml-remove-nodes            public function filterAttribute  attributeName        attributeValues   array     keepNodes   TRUE                        nodesToRemove   array             foreach  this as  node                         attributeValue    string  node  attributeName                if   keepNodes                                if   in array  attributeValue   attributeValues    nodesToRemove      node                            else                                if  in array  attributeValue   attributeValues    nodesToRemove      node                                    result   count  nodesToRemove            foreach   nodesToRemove as  node                unset  node 0                       return  result            Then having your  doc XML you can remove your  lt seg id  A12   gt  node calling    data   lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt       lt seg id  A12   gt       lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt      doc new SimpleXMLElementExtended  data    doc- gt seg- gt filterAttribute  id     A12    FALSE     or remove multiple  lt seg   gt  nodes    doc- gt seg- gt filterAttribute  id     A1    A12    A29    FALSE     For keeping only  lt seg id  A5   gt  and  lt seg id  A30   gt  nodes and removing the rest    doc- gt seg- gt filterAttribute  id     A5    A30    TRUE

User · Answer

If you extend the base SimpleXMLElement class  you can use this method   class MyXML extends SimpleXMLElement        public function find  xpath             tmp    this- gt xpath  xpath           return isset  tmp 0     tmp 0   null             public function remove              dom   dom import simplexml  this           return  dom- gt parentNode- gt removeChild  dom                Example  removing the  lt bar gt  element with id   1  foo   new MyXML   lt foo gt  lt bar id  1   gt  lt bar id  2   gt  lt  foo gt      foo- gt find    bar  id  1    - gt remove    print  foo- gt asXML        lt foo gt  lt bar id  2   gt  lt  foo gt

User · Answer

Even though SimpleXML doesn t have a detailed way to remove elements  you can remove elements from SimpleXML by using PHP s unset    The key to doing this is managing to target the desired element  At least one way to do the targeting is using the order of the elements  First find out the order number of the element you want to remove  for example with a loop   then remove the element    target   false   i   0  foreach   xml- gt seg as  s      if   s  id     A12      target    i  break       i      if   target     false      unset  xml- gt seg  target        You can even remove multiple elements with this  by storing the order number of target items in an array  Just remember to do the removal in a reverse order  array reverse  targets    because removing an item naturally reduces the order number of the items that come after it   Admittedly  it s a bit of a hackaround  but it seems to work fine

User · Answer

Just unset the node    str    lt  lt  lt STR  lt a gt     lt b gt       lt c gt       lt  c gt     lt  b gt   lt  a gt  STR    xml   simplexml load string  str   unset  xml     gt  a     gt  b     gt  c      this would remove node c echo  xml     gt  asXML       xml document string without node c   This code was taken from How to delete   remove nodes in SimpleXML

User · Answer

Just unset the node    str    lt  lt  lt STR  lt a gt     lt b gt       lt c gt       lt  c gt     lt  b gt   lt  a gt  STR    xml   simplexml load string  str   unset  xml     gt  a     gt  b     gt  c      this would remove node c echo  xml     gt  asXML       xml document string without node c   This code was taken from How to delete   remove nodes in SimpleXML

User · Answer

I was also strugling with this issue and the answer is way easier than those provided over here  you can just look for it using xpath and unset it it the following method   unset  XML- gt xpath  NODESNAME  id  test     0 - gt  0      this code will look for a node named  NODESNAME  with the id attribute  test  and remove the first occurence   remember to save the xml using  XML- saveXML

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If you want to cut list of similar  not unique  child elements  for example items of RSS feed  you could use this code   for    i   9999   i  gt  10   i--        unset  xml- gt xpath   rss channel item     i       0 - gt  0        It will cut tail of RSS to 10 elements  I tried to remove with  for    i   10   i  lt  9999   i            unset  xml- gt xpath   rss channel item      i        0 - gt  0        But it works somehow randomly and cuts only some of the elements

User · Answer

There is a way to remove a child element via SimpleXml  The code looks for a   element  and does nothing   Otherwise it adds the element to a string   It then writes out the string to a file   Also note that the code saves a backup before overwriting the original file    username     GET  delete account    echo  DELETING     username   xml   simplexml load file  users xml      str     lt  xml version   1 0    gt   lt users gt    foreach  xml- gt children   as  child     if  child- gt getName       user           if  username     child  name              continue        else            str    str  child- gt asXML                 str    str    lt  users gt    echo  str    xml- gt asXML  users backup xml     myFile    users xml    fh   fopen  myFile   w   or die  can t open file    fwrite  fh   str   fclose  fh

User · Answer

While SimpleXML provides a way to remove XML nodes  its modification capabilities are somewhat limited  One other solution is to resort to using the DOM extension  dom import simplexml   will help you with converting your SimpleXMLElement into a DOMElement   Just some example code  tested with PHP 5 2 5     data   lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt       lt seg id  A12   gt       lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt     doc new SimpleXMLElement  data   foreach  doc- gt seg as  seg        if  seg  id       A12              dom dom import simplexml  seg            dom- gt parentNode- gt removeChild  dom           echo  doc- gt asXml      outputs   lt  xml version  1 0   gt   lt data gt  lt seg id  A1   gt  lt seg id  A5   gt  lt seg id  A29   gt  lt seg id  A30   gt  lt  data gt    By the way  selecting specific nodes is much more simple when you use XPath  SimpleXMLElement- xpath      segs  doc- gt xpath    seq  id  A12      if  count  segs  gt  1         seg  segs 0        same deletion procedure as above

User · Answer

Since I encountered the same fatal error as Gerry and I m not familiar with DOM  I decided to do it like this    item    xml- gt xpath    seg  id  A12       page    xml- gt xpath   data     id    A12    if    count  item    amp  amp   count  page           item    item 0        page    page 0            find the numerical index within - gt children         ch    page- gt children         ch as array    array   ch       if    count  ch as array    amp  amp   isset  ch as array  seg                  ch as array    ch as array  seg             index in array   array search  item   ch as array           if      index in array     false             amp  amp     index in array     null             amp  amp   isset  ch  index in array              amp  amp     ch  index in array   id       id                        delete it              unset  ch  index in array                 echo   lt pre gt    var dump  xml   echo   lt  pre gt                        end of   if xml object successfully converted to array         end of   valid item  AND  section

User · Answer

Just unset the node    str    lt  lt  lt STR  lt a gt     lt b gt       lt c gt       lt  c gt     lt  b gt   lt  a gt  STR    xml   simplexml load string  str   unset  xml     gt  a     gt  b     gt  c      this would remove node c echo  xml     gt  asXML       xml document string without node c   This code was taken from How to delete   remove nodes in SimpleXML

User · Answer

This work for me    data     lt data gt   lt seg id  A1   gt   lt seg id  A5   gt   lt seg id  A12   gt   lt seg id  A29   gt   lt seg id  A30   gt  lt  data gt      doc   new SimpleXMLElement  data     segarr    doc- gt seg    count   count  segarr     j   0   for   i   0   i  lt   count   i           if   segarr  j   id       A12             unset  segarr  j             j    j - 1             j    j   1     echo  doc- gt asXml

User · Answer

Idea about helper functions is from one of the comments for DOM on php net and idea about using unset is from kavoir com  For me this solution finally worked       function Myunset  node     unsetChildren  node     parent    node- gt parentNode   unset  node      function unsetChildren  node     while  isset  node- gt firstChild       unsetChildren  node- gt firstChild    unset  node- gt firstChild          using it   xml is SimpleXmlElement  Myunset  xml- gt channel- gt item  i      The result is stored in  xml  so don   t worry about assigning it to any variable

User · Answer

Contrary to popular belief in the existing answers  each Simplexml element node can be removed from the document just by itself and unset    The point in case is just that you need to understand how SimpleXML actually works   First locate the element you want to remove   list  element     doc- gt xpath     seg  id  A12        Then remove the element represented in  element you unset its self-reference   unset  element 0      This works because the first element of any element is the element itself in Simplexml  self-reference   This has to do with its magic nature  numeric indices are representing the elements in any list  e g  parent- children   and even the single child is such a list   Non-numeric string indices represent attributes  in array-access  or child-element s   in property-access    Therefore numeric indecies in property-access like   unset  element- gt  0      work as well   Naturally with that xpath example  it is rather straight forward  in PHP 5 4    unset  doc- gt xpath     seg  id  A12     0  0      The full example code  Demo     lt  php        Remove a child with a specific attribute  in SimpleXML for PHP     link http   stackoverflow com a 16062633 367456       data  lt  lt  lt DATA  lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt       lt seg id  A12   gt       lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt  DATA     doc   new SimpleXMLElement  data    unset  doc- gt xpath  seg  id  A12     0 - gt  0      doc- gt asXml  php   output      Output    lt  xml version  1 0   gt   lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt        lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt

User · Answer

For future reference  deleting nodes with SimpleXML can be a pain sometimes  especially if you don t know the exact structure of the document  That s why I have written SimpleDOM  a class that extends SimpleXMLElement to add a few convenience methods   For instance  deleteNodes   will delete all nodes matching a XPath expression  And if you want to delete all nodes with the attribute  id  equal to  A5   all you have to do is      don t forget to include SimpleDOM php include  SimpleDOM php       use simpledom load string   instead of simplexml load string    data   simpledom load string        lt data gt           lt seg id  A1   gt           lt seg id  A5   gt           lt seg id  A12   gt           lt seg id  A29   gt           lt seg id  A30   gt       lt  data gt          and there the magic happens  data- gt deleteNodes    seg  id  A5

User · Answer

With FluidXML you can use XPath to select the elements to remove    doc   fluidify  doc     doc- gt remove       id  A12        https   github com servo-php fluidxml    The XPath      id  A12   means    in any point of the document      every node     with the attribute id equal to A12    id  A12

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A new idea  simple xml works as a array   We can search for the indexes of the  array  we want to delete  and then  use the unset   function to delete this array indexes  My example    pos  this- gt xml- gt getXMLUser     i 0   array pos array    foreach  this- gt xml- gt doc- gt users- gt usr  pos - gt u cfg root- gt profiles- gt profile as  profile        if  profile- gt p timestamp   0      array pos    i         i        print r  array pos   for  i 0  i lt count  array pos   i          unset  this- gt xml- gt doc- gt users- gt usr  pos - gt u cfg root- gt profiles- gt profile  array pos  i

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While SimpleXML provides a way to remove XML nodes  its modification capabilities are somewhat limited  One other solution is to resort to using the DOM extension  dom import simplexml   will help you with converting your SimpleXMLElement into a DOMElement   Just some example code  tested with PHP 5 2 5     data   lt data gt       lt seg id  A1   gt       lt seg id  A5   gt       lt seg id  A12   gt       lt seg id  A29   gt       lt seg id  A30   gt   lt  data gt     doc new SimpleXMLElement  data   foreach  doc- gt seg as  seg        if  seg  id       A12              dom dom import simplexml  seg            dom- gt parentNode- gt removeChild  dom           echo  doc- gt asXml      outputs   lt  xml version  1 0   gt   lt data gt  lt seg id  A1   gt  lt seg id  A5   gt  lt seg id  A29   gt  lt seg id  A30   gt  lt  data gt    By the way  selecting specific nodes is much more simple when you use XPath  SimpleXMLElement- xpath      segs  doc- gt xpath    seq  id  A12      if  count  segs  gt  1         seg  segs 0        same deletion procedure as above

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I was also strugling with this issue and the answer is way easier than those provided over here  you can just look for it using xpath and unset it it the following method   unset  XML- gt xpath  NODESNAME  id  test     0 - gt  0      this code will look for a node named  NODESNAME  with the id attribute  test  and remove the first occurence   remember to save the xml using  XML- saveXML

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If you want to cut list of similar  not unique  child elements  for example items of RSS feed  you could use this code   for    i   9999   i  gt  10   i--        unset  xml- gt xpath   rss channel item     i       0 - gt  0        It will cut tail of RSS to 10 elements  I tried to remove with  for    i   10   i  lt  9999   i            unset  xml- gt xpath   rss channel item      i        0 - gt  0        But it works somehow randomly and cuts only some of the elements

[php] Remove a child with a specific attribute, in SimpleXML for PHP

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