remove the blank rows after i removed xml elements?

Question

i removed some elements from a xml file with simpledom.

the code:

$this->xmlDocument->removeNodes("//entity[name='mac']");

here is the initial file:

<entity id="1000070">
    <name>apple</name>
    <type>category</type>
    <entities>
        <entity id="7002870">
            <name>mac</name>
            <type>category</type>
        </entity>
        <entity id="7024080">
            <name>iphone</name>
            <type>category</type>
        </entity>
        <entity id="7024080">
            <name>ipad</name>
            <type>category</type>
        </entity>
    </entities>
</entity>

the file afterwards:

<entity id="1000070">
    <name>apple</name>
    <type>category</type>
    <entities>




        <entity id="7024080">
            <name>iphone</name>
            <type>category</type>
        </entity>
        <entity id="7024080">
            <name>ipad</name>
            <type>category</type>
        </entity>
    </entities>
</entity>

i wonder how i could also remove the blank lines that are left after i ran the removal code?

thanks!

You can remove the blanks , but you will probably not end up with nicely indented (prettified) XML. You will probably end up with `` on the same line. — nl-x, Jun 17 '13 at 08:45

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 17 '13 at 08:23

0

Just in case you'd like to remove ALL these blank spaces for your output, there's a simple way below:

$this->xmlDocument->removeNodes(
    "//entity[name='mac'] | //text()[normalize-space(.) = '']"
);

answered Jun 17 '13 at 08:23

caio.pedreira

1

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '11 at 09:16

You can target the whitespace text nodes with XPath.

If the nodes you want to remove are //entity[name='mac'] then the whitespace text node before it would be

//text()[normalize-space(.) = ''][following-sibling::entity[position()=1][name='mac']]

And then, you can remove both nodesets by using the | operator and your command becomes:

$this->xmlDocument->removeNodes(
    "//entity[name='mac'] | //text()[normalize-space(.) = ''][following-sibling::entity[position()=1][name='mac']]"
);

remove the blank rows after i removed xml elements?

2 Answers2