Remove empty tags from a XML with PHP

You can use XPath with the predicate not(node()) to select all elements that do not have child nodes.

<?php$doc = new DOMDocument;$doc->preserveWhiteSpace = false;$doc->loadxml('<parentnode>    <tag1>2</tag1>    <tag2>4</tag2>    <tag3></tag3>    <tag2>4</tag2>    <tag3></tag3>    <tag2>4</tag2>    <tag3></tag3></parentnode>');$xpath = new DOMXPath($doc);foreach( $xpath->query('//*[not(node())]') as $node ) {    $node->parentNode->removeChild($node);}$doc->formatOutput = true;echo $doc->savexml();

prints

<?xml version="1.0"?><parentnode>  <tag1>2</tag1>  <tag2>4</tag2>  <tag2>4</tag2>  <tag2>4</tag2></parentnode>

This works recursively and removes nodes that:

• contain only spaces
• do not have attributes
• do not have child notes

// not(*) does not have children elements// not(@*) does not have attributes// text()[normalize-space()] nodes that include whitespace textwhile (($node_list = $xpath->query('//*[not(*) and not(@*) and not(text()[normalize-space()])]')) && $node_list->length) {    foreach ($node_list as $node) {        $node->parentNode->removeChild($node);    }}

$dom = new DOMDocument;$dom->loadXML($xml);$elements = $dom->getElementsByTagName('*');foreach($elements as $element) {   if ( ! $element->hasChildNodes() OR $element->nodeValue == '') {       $element->parentNode->removeChild($element);   }} echo $dom->saveXML();

CodePad.