Last updated: Fri, 20 Nov 2009

DOMDocument::loadHTML

(PHP 5)

DOMDocument::loadHTML — Load HTML from a string

Description

bool DOMDocument::loadHTML ( string $source )

The function parses the HTML contained in the string source . Unlike loading XML, HTML does not have to be well-formed to load. This function may also be called statically to load and create a DOMDocument object. The static invocation may be used when no DOMDocument properties need to be set prior to loading.

Parameters

source: The HTML string.

Return Values

Returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure. If called statically, returns a DOMDocument and issues E_STRICT warning.

Errors/Exceptions

If an empty string is passed as the source , a warning will be generated. This warning is not generated by libxml and cannot be handled using libxml's error handling functions.

Examples

Example #1 Creating a Document


<?php
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTML("<html><body>Test<br></body></html>");
echo $doc->saveHTML();
?>


Here is a function I wrote to capitalize the previous remarks about charset problems (UTF-8...) when using loadHTML and then DOM functions.

It adds the charset meta tag just after <head> to improve automatic encoding detection, converts any specific character to an html entity, thus PHP DOM functions/attributes will return correct values.



<?php

mb_detect_order("ASCII,UTF-8,ISO-8859-1,windows-1252,iso-8859-15");

function loadNprepare($url,$encod='') {

        $content        = file_get_contents($url);

        if (!empty($content)) {

                if (empty($encod))

                        $encod  = mb_detect_encoding($content);

                $headpos        = mb_strpos($content,'<head>');

                if (FALSE=== $headpos)

                        $headpos= mb_strpos($content,'<HEAD>');

                if (FALSE!== $headpos) {

                        $headpos+=6;

                        $content = mb_substr($content,0,$headpos) . '<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset='.$encod.'">' .mb_substr($content,$headpos);

                }

                $content=mb_convert_encoding($content, 'HTML-ENTITIES', $encod);

        }

        $dom = new DomDocument;

        $res = $dom->loadHTML($content);

        if (!$res) return FALSE;

        return $dom;

}

?>



NB: it uses mb_strpos/mb_substr instead of mb_ereg_replace because that seemed more efficient with huge html pages.

Errol
11-Feb-2009 05:05


It should be noted that when any text is provided within the body tag


outside of a containing element, the DOMDocument will encapsulate that


text into a paragraph tag (<p>).





For example:


<?php


$doc = new DOMDocument();


$doc->loadHTML("<html><body>Test<br><div>Text</div></body></html>");


echo $doc->saveHTML();


?>





will yield:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"


"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">


<html><body>


<p>Test<br></p>


<div>Text</div>


</body></html>





while:


<?php


$doc = new DOMDocument();


$doc->loadHTML(


    "<html><body><i>Test</i><br><div>Text</div></body></html>");


echo $doc->saveHTML();


?>





will yield:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"


"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">


<html><body>


<i>Test</i><br><div>Text</div>


</body></html>

jamesedwardcooke+php at gmail dot com
20-Oct-2008 08:37


Using loadHTML() automagically sets the doctype property of your DOMDocument instance(to the doctype in the html, or defaults to 4.0 Transitional). If you set the doctype with DOMImplementation it will be overridden.



I assumed it was possible to set it and then load html with the doctype I defined(in order to decide the doctype at runtime), and ran into a huge headache trying to find out where my doctype was going. Hopefully this helps someone else.

onPHP5.com
19-Nov-2007 03:51


For more info on how loadHTML/loadHTMLFile handle encodings, please visit http://www.onphp5.com/article/57

xuanbn at yahoo dot com
04-Oct-2007 10:38


If you use loadHTML() to process utf HTML string (eg in Vietnamese), you may experience result in garbage text, while some files were OK. Even your HTML already have meta charset  like



  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">



I have discovered that, to help loadHTML() process utf file correctly, the meta tag should come first, before any utf string appear. For example, this HTML file



<html>

 <head>

    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

    <title> Vietnamese - Tiếng Việt</title>

  </head>

<body></body>

</html>



will be OK with loadHTML() when <meta> tag appear <title> tag.



But the file below will not regcornize by loadHTML() because <title> tag contains utf string appear before <meta> tag.



<html>

 <head>

    <title> Vietnamese - Tiếng Việt</title>

    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

  </head>

<body></body>

</html>

Ard
18-Jun-2007 12:55


The comment from bigtree at DONTSPAM dot 29a dot nl

26-Apr-2005 11:15 was helpful.

In addition I noted that if your doctype declaration is not valid, DomDocument::loadHtml won't respect your charset=utf-8. It made me crazy. Beware!

hanhvansu at yahoo dot com
27-Apr-2007 05:50


When using loadHTML() to process UTF-8 pages, you may meet the problem that the output of dom functions are not like the input. For example, if you want to get "Cạnh tranh", you will receive "Cáº¡nh tranh".  I suggest we use mb_convert_encoding before load UTF-8 page :

<?php

    $pageDom = new DomDocument();    

    $searchPage = mb_convert_encoding($htmlUTF8Page, 'HTML-ENTITIES', "UTF-8"); 

    @$pageDom->loadHTML($htmlUTF8Page);



?>

romain dot lalaut at laposte dot net
15-Feb-2007 05:31


Note that the elements of such document will have no namespace even with <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

bigtree at DONTSPAM dot 29a dot nl
26-Apr-2005 11:15


Pay attention when loading html that has a different charset than iso-8859-1. Since this method does not actively try to figure out what the html you are trying to load is encoded in (like most browsers do), you have to specify it in the html head. If, for instance, your html is in utf-8, make sure you have a meta tag in the html's head section:



<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>

</head>



If you do not specify the charset like this, all high-ascii bytes will be html-encoded. It is not enough to set the dom document you are loading the html in to UTF-8.

add a note

DOMDocument::loadHTMLFile

DOMDocument::load