Deleting an xml node and all children via php

Question

I have been looking around here and google and found various code, but none of them work. I'm assuming it's because none of them match my exact situation. I have an xml structure like this:

<employees>
        <employee EmpID="">
            <first_name></first_name>
            <last_name></last_name>
            <ssnum></ssnum>
            <status></status>
            <contact_info>
                    <office_phone></office_phone>
                    <email></email>
                    <cell_phone></cell_phone>
            </contact_info>
            <access_info level="user">
                    <username></username>
                    <password></password>
            </access_info>
            <department></department>
            <date_started></date_started>
            <years></years>
            <position></position>
            <salary></salary>
            <e_increase></e_increase>
            <e_raise></e_raise>
            <photo></photo>
    </employee>
</employees>

I have the EmpID of the employee I want to delete stored in a variable called $ID. I want to remove that employee completely. I have tried things like:

foreach ($doc->getElementsByTagName('employee') as $employee) {
    if($employee->getAttribute('EmpID') === $ID) {
        foreach ($employee as $node) {
    $node->parentNode->removeChild($node);
    }
    }
}

and other loops trying to get things similarly, as in these posts: PHP XML remove element and all children by name and Remove all children from a XML Node PHP DOM but I have not been able to get this to work successfully.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

$ID = '';

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadXML($xml_string);

$xpath = new DOMXpath($dom);
$nodes = $xpath->evaluate('/employees/employee[@EmpID = "' . $ID . '"]');
foreach ($nodes as $node) {
    $node->parentNode->removeChild($node);
}

Answer 2

there you go:

$xml = '<employees>
        <employee EmpID="1">
            <first_name></first_name>
            <last_name></last_name>
            <ssnum></ssnum>
            <status></status>
            <contact_info>
                    <office_phone></office_phone>
                    <email></email>
                    <cell_phone></cell_phone>
            </contact_info>
            <access_info level="user">
                    <username></username>
                    <password></password>
            </access_info>
            <department></department>
            <date_started></date_started>
            <years></years>
            <position></position>
            <salary></salary>
            <e_increase></e_increase>
            <e_raise></e_raise>
            <photo></photo>
    </employee>
     <employee EmpID="2">
            <first_name></first_name>
            <last_name></last_name>
            <ssnum></ssnum>
            <status></status>
            <contact_info>
                    <office_phone></office_phone>
                    <email></email>
                    <cell_phone></cell_phone>
            </contact_info>
            <access_info level="user">
                    <username></username>
                    <password></password>
            </access_info>
            <department></department>
            <date_started></date_started>
            <years></years>
            <position></position>
            <salary></salary>
            <e_increase></e_increase>
            <e_raise></e_raise>
            <photo></photo>
    </employee>
</employees>';

$doc = new DOMDocument();

$doc->loadXML($xml);

$selector = new DOMXPath($doc);
$els = $selector->query('/employees//employee');

//or
//$els = $doc->getElementsByTagName('employee');


foreach($els as $el){
    if($el->getAttribute('EmpID') == 1){
        $el->parentNode->removeChild($el);
    }
}

$xml = $doc->saveXML();

echo($xml);

Answer 3

Looking up my xml I have it slightly different .. Give this a try.

foreach ($doc->getElementsByTagName('employee') as $employee) {
    if($employee->getAttribute('EmpID') === $ID) {
       $employee->parentNode->removeChild($employee);
       // $dom->save($xmlFile);
    }
}