voku/simple_html_dom

Simple HTML DOM package.

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github.com/voku/simple_html_dom

pkg:composer/voku/simple_html_dom

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Installs: 9 374 705

Dependents: 65

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Stars: 901

Open Issues: 1

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5.0.0 2026-04-21 08:58 UTC

Requires

  • php: >=7.1.0
  • ext-dom: *
  • ext-libxml: *
  • ext-simplexml: *
  • symfony/css-selector: ~3.0 || ~4.0 || ~5.0 || ~6.0 || ~7.0 || ~8.0

Requires (Dev)

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MIT 091de9ee6daf73a7ee3a062fb53e3687bc54ef70

domphp domHTML Parser

Published on Packagist.org on 2026-04-21 09:02 UTC

This package is auto-updated.

Last update: 2026-08-17 10:38:07 UTC

README

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📜 Simple Html Dom Parser for PHP

A HTML DOM parser written in PHP - let you manipulate HTML in a very easy way! This is a fork of PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser project but instead of string manipulation we use DOMDocument and modern php classes like "Symfony CssSelector".

  • PHP 7.1+ runtime support, tested on PHP 7.1 - 8.4
  • PHP-FIG Standard
  • Composer & PSR-4 support
  • PHPUnit testing via GitHub Actions
  • PHPStan-clean source tree on the current release branch
  • PHP-Quality testing via SensioLabsInsight
  • UTF-8 Support (more support via "voku/portable-utf8")
  • Invalid HTML Support (partly ...)
  • Find tags on an HTML page with selectors just like jQuery
  • Extract contents from HTML in a single line

Install via "composer require"

composer require voku/simple_html_dom
composer require voku/portable-utf8 # if you need e.g. UTF-8 fixed output

Upgrade notes for v5.0.0

  • PHP 7.0 is no longer supported; the package now requires PHP 7.1 or newer.
  • Nested find*() calls now return live nodes scoped to the original DOM, so mutating nested results updates the source document.
  • See the CHANGELOG for the full release notes.

Quick Start

use voku\helper\HtmlDomParser;

require_once 'composer/autoload.php';

...
$dom = HtmlDomParser::str_get_html($str);
// or 
$dom = HtmlDomParser::file_get_html($file);

$element = $dom->findOne('#css-selector'); // "$element" === instance of "SimpleHtmlDomInterface"

$elements = $dom->findMulti('.css-selector'); // "$elements" === instance of SimpleHtmlDomNodeInterface<int, SimpleHtmlDomInterface>

$elementOrFalse = $dom->findOneOrFalse('#css-selector'); // "$elementOrFalse" === instance of "SimpleHtmlDomInterface" or false

$elementsOrFalse = $dom->findMultiOrFalse('.css-selector'); // "$elementsOrFalse" === instance of SimpleHtmlDomNodeInterface<int, SimpleHtmlDomInterface> or false
...

HTML5 parsing on PHP >= 8.4: Html5DomParser

PHP 8.4 added \Dom\HTMLDocument, a parser that follows the HTML5 specification and therefore recovers from broken markup the way a browser does. This library exposes it as its own class, for the same reason PHP put it next to \DOMDocument instead of adding a mode to it: the parsing rules are different, and that difference is visible in the result.

Html5DomParser extends HtmlDomParser and has the same API, so switching means changing the class name and nothing else:

use voku\helper\Html5DomParser;

$dom = Html5DomParser::str_get_html('<table><tr><td>x</table><p>a<p>b');

$dom->html(); // '<table><tbody><tr><td>x</td></tr></tbody></table><p>a</p><p>b</p>'

// HtmlDomParser, unchanged, still returns:
// '<table><tr><td>x</td></tr></table><p>a</p><p>b</p>'

HtmlDomParser is not affected by any of this and stays the default parser of this library.

What you get with Html5DomParser: implied <tbody>, auto-closed <p> / <li> / <td>, recovery from misnested formatting tags, tag names normalized to lower case, camel-case SVG names (viewBox, feColorMatrix) restored, the encoding detected from the document like a browser does, and elements that libxml would have dropped or moved.

What is different, and why it is a separate class:

  • HTML entities are resolved to their characters, as the specification requires, so &nbsp; and &amp; come back as and & instead of staying entities.
  • The HTML5 parser always builds a complete document, so getDocument()->documentElement is always <html>, even for a fragment. html() / innerHtml() still return the fragment.
  • A bare attribute has the empty string as its value, exactly as in a browser, so <input checked> gives getAttribute('checked') === ''. Test presence with hasAttribute(), and expect checked="" in the serialized output.
  • Content written after </body> is moved back into the body, like a browser does.
  • useKeepBrokenHtml() works on top of it: the broken fragments are preserved verbatim, but because they travel through the parser as text, HTML5 tree construction can move such a fragment out of a <table> or out of the <head>. The fragment itself is never lost.

tests/Html5DomParserCompatibilityTest.php is the HtmlDomParser test suite run against Html5DomParser, so every one of these differences is pinned by a test, and everything else is proven to be unchanged.

The result is bridged back into a \DOMDocument, which costs one extra serialize + parse and more transient memory. Measure it for your own input:

php build/benchmark_html5_parser.php

On the fixtures of this repository the complete loadHtml() + query + html() round-trip is currently faster than the libxml path (factor 0.72 - 0.95), because the HTML5 parser needs none of the string preprocessing that path does; small synthetic fragments are slower (factor ~1.3 - 1.5), and peak memory is higher in both cases.

Html5DomParser is a strict parser choice. It does not silently switch back to HtmlDomParser, because that would make the class name lie about the parsing semantics. On an application that also runs on PHP < 8.4, check support before selecting the class:

if (Html5DomParser::isHtml5ParserSupported()) {
    $dom = Html5DomParser::str_get_html($html);
} else {
    $dom = HtmlDomParser::str_get_html($html); // explicit application decision
}

Parsing throws a RuntimeException when the HTML5 backend is unavailable or when its normalized tree cannot be represented by the legacy \DOMDocument XML bridge (for example an HTML-valid attribute name that XML cannot represent). Use HtmlDomParser explicitly if legacy parsing is the intended fallback. A successful Html5DomParser parse therefore always means HTML5 tree construction actually happened.

Examples

github.com/voku/simple_html_dom/tree/master/example

API

github.com/voku/simple_html_dom/tree/master/README_API.md

Support

For support and donations please visit Github | Issues | PayPal | Patreon.

For status updates and release announcements please visit Releases | Twitter | Patreon.

For professional support please contact me.

Thanks

  • Thanks to GitHub (Microsoft) for hosting the code and a good infrastructure including Issues-Managment, etc.
  • Thanks to IntelliJ as they make the best IDEs for PHP and they gave me an open source license for PhpStorm!
  • Thanks to Travis CI for being the most awesome, easiest continous integration tool out there!
  • Thanks to StyleCI for the simple but powerfull code style check.
  • Thanks to PHPStan && Psalm for relly great Static analysis tools and for discover bugs in the code!

License

FOSSA Status