How to Access DOM Element InnerHTML in PHP DOM API

In the PHP DOM implementation, accessing the innerHTML of a DOMNode requires a specific approach. Here's a reliable solution and how it compares to other options.

The PHP DOM API does not provide a dedicated function to retrieve the innerHTML. Unlike in JavaScript, where innerHTML is a property of an element, in PHP DOM, you need to manually iterate over the node's children to build the innerHTML.

Updated Variant with PHP Manual User Note #89718

The user note suggests an updated variant for constructing the innerHTML:

function DOMinnerHTML(DOMNode $element) 
{ 
    $innerHTML = ""; 
    $children  = $element->childNodes;

    foreach ($children as $child) 
    { 
        $innerHTML .= $element->ownerDocument->saveHTML($child);
    }

    return $innerHTML; 
} 

Example Usage

Assuming you have an HTML string stored in $html_string, here's how you can implement this function:

$dom = new DOMDocument(); 
$dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;
$dom->formatOutput       = true;
$dom->load($html_string);

$domTables  = $dom->getElementsByTagName("table"); 

foreach ($domTables as $table) 
{ 
    echo DOMinnerHTML($table); 
}