Access an element's parent with PHP's SimpleXML?

You could run a simple XPath query to get it:

$parent_div = $div->xpath("parent::*");

And as this is Simplexml and it only has element and attribute nodes and a parent node can only be an element and never an attribute, the abbreviated syntax can be used:

$parent_div = $div->xpath("..");

(via: Common Xpath Cheats - SimpleXML Type Cheatsheet (Feb 2013; by hakre) )

$div->get_parent_node(); // Sadly, there's no such function.

Note that you can extend SimpleXML to make it so. For example:

class my_xml extends SimpleXMLElement{    public function get_parent_node()    {        return current($this->xpath('parent::*'));    }}

And now all you have to do is modify the code you use to create your SimpleXMLElement in the first place:

$foo = new SimpleXMLElement('<foo/>');// becomes$foo = new my_xml('<foo/>');$foo = simplexml_load_string('<foo/>');// becomes$foo = simplexml_load_string('<foo/>', 'my_xml');$foo = simplexml_load_file('foo.xml');// becomes$foo = simplexml_load_file('foo.xml', 'my_xml');

The best part is that SimpleXML will automatically and transparently return my_xml objects for this document, so you don't have to change anything else, which makes your get_parent_node() method chainable:

// returns $grandchild's parent's parent$grandchild->get_parent_node()->get_parent_node();

If memory serves, an xpath() call returns one or more SimpleXMLElements. If that's the case, then you may be able to use something like:

$div->xpath( '..' );# or$div->xpath( 'parent::*' );