fetch data from elements with same id in a HTML document

Question

I am using PHP DOMDocument class to parse the HTML file, and using the code,

$dom =new DOMDocument();
@$dom->loadHTMLFile($file_path);
$dom->getElementById("my_id")

to fetch the data of the element with the ID "my_id", but the problem is the HTML document is containing multiple elements with same ID, and i want the data in all that elements.. The HTML code,

<div id="my_id">
     phone number 123
</div>
<div id="my_id">
     address somewhere 
</div>
 <div id="my_id">
     date of birth
</div>

i know the ID is unique, but here the case is like that.. in this case will getElementById() will return an array..

Answer 1

No, if anything getElementById() will return a DOMElement. In case of multiple returned nodes, results would be a DOMNodeList, but that doesnt apply here.

Furthermore, DOM will not recognize your IDs until you validate the Document against a DTD or Schema file that defines the id attribute as an actual XML ID attribute, which is different from other attributes. That's why DOMAttr has a method isId and XML requires IDs to be of unique value. As VolkerK pointed out in the comments, when using loadHTMLFile, this validation will occur automatically.

See my answer to Simplify PHP DOM XML parsing - how? for more detailed information.

Answer 2

Nope. You'll find that the value of the getElementById is undefined, though you will be able to find out that the element is a DIV

Answer 3

Maybe a XPath Query for the ID-attribute can help.

Answer 4

If there's absolutely no way you (or somebody else) can fix the incoming data (which, as has been pointed out, is the only really right thing to do) This might be a case where SimpleHTMLDOM's more lenient parsing turns out to be fruitful.

I haven't tried how it deals with this, but I could imagine that

foreach ($html->find('div[id=my_id]') as $element)
 echo "Found ".$element->id."<br>";

works as needed.