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# DomNode->append_child

(no version information, might be only in CVS)

DomNode->append_child -- Adds new child at the end of the children

## Description

object DomNode->append_child ( object newnode)

This functions appends a child to an existing list of children or creates a new list of children. The child can be created with e.g. DomDocument_create_element(), DomDocument_create_text() etc. or simply by using any other node.

(PHP < 4.3) Before a new child is appended it is first duplicated. Therefore the new child is a completely new copy which can be modified without changing the node which was passed to this function. If the node passed has children itself, they will be duplicated as well, which makes it quite easy to duplicate large parts of a xml document. The return value is the appended child. If you plan to do further modifications on the appended child you must use the returned node.

(PHP >= 4.3) The new child `newnode` is first unlinked from its existing context, if it already existed in a document. Therefore the node is moved and not copies anymore. This is the behaviour according to the W3C specifications. If you want to duplicate large parts of a xml document, use DomNode->clone_node() before appending.

The following example will add a new element node to a fresh document and sets the attribute "align" to "left".

Example 1. Adding a child
    <?php
    $doc = domxml_new_doc("1.0");
    $node = $doc->create_element("para");
    $newnode = $doc->append_child($node);
    $newnode->set_attribute("align", "left");
    ?>

The above example could also be written as the following:

Example 2. Adding a child
    <?php
    $doc = domxml_new_doc("1.0");
    $node = $doc->create_element("para");
    $node->set_attribute("align", "left");
    $newnode = $doc->append_child($node);
    ?>

A more comples example is the one below. It first searches for a certain element, duplicates it including its children and adds it as a sibling. Finally a new attribute is added to one of the children of the new sibling and the whole document is dumped.

Example 3. Adding a child
    <?php
    include("example.inc");

    if(!$dom = domxml_open_mem($xmlstr)) {
      echo "Error while parsing the document\n";
      exit;
    }

    $elements = $dom->get_elements_by_tagname("informaltable");
    print_r($elements);
    $element = $elements[0];

    $parent = $element->parent_node();
    $newnode = $parent->append_child($element);
    $children = $newnode->children();
    $attr = $children[1]->set_attribute("align", "left");

    echo "<PRE>";
    $xmlfile = $dom->dump_mem();
    echo htmlentities($xmlfile);
    echo "</PRE>";
    ?>

The above example could also be done with DomNode_insert_before() instead of DomNode_append_child().

See also DomNode_insert_before(), DomNode_clone_node().

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