How to Effectively Remove a Parent Node Using XPath and SimpleXML in PHP?

How to Remove an XPath Node Using SimpleXML

SimpleXML is a PHP extension that simplifies working with XML. However, it can be confusing to remove a parent node using XPath queries.

In the given example, the code uses XPath to locate a specific item using its ID and attempts to unset its parent node. However, this approach doesn't actually remove the parent node.

To remove a node effectively, you can use the following steps:

1. Create a new SimpleXMLElement object from the XML string.
2. Use XPath to locate the target node as in the example.
3. Utilize the unset() method on the object reference to remove it.

The modified code would look like this:

<code class="php">$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlString);
$data = $xml->xpath('//items/info[item_id="' . $item_id . '"]');
unset($data[0]);</code>

Alternative Approach Using DOMDocument

Alternatively, you can use the DOMDocument class for further control over XML manipulation. Here's an example:

<code class="php">$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadXML($xmlString);
$item_id = 456;
$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);
foreach($xpath->query('//items[info/item_id="' . $item_id . '"]') as $node) {
  $node->parentNode->removeChild($node);
}
echo $doc->saveXML();</code>

This method removes the entire items node for the specified item ID.

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