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Greg Bowler edited this page Apr 18, 2026 · 2 revisions

This section shows the smallest useful setup outside of WebEngine.

Tip

In WebEngine, you usually do not need this setup code. The framework gives you a pre-constructed HTMLDocument, and DomTemplate is also available by default if the task is really data binding rather than low-level DOM work.

1. Install the package

composer require phpgt/dom

The package requires PHP's dom, libxml, and mbstring extensions.

2. Construct an HTMLDocument 

use GT\Dom\HTMLDocument;

$html = <<<'HTML'
<!doctype html>
<h1>Hello, <span class="name">you</span>!</h1>
HTML;

$document = new HTMLDocument($html);

At this point we have a document tree we can query and modify using familiar DOM calls.

3. Query the document

$name = $document->querySelector(".name");
$name->innerText = "Cody";

These methods follow the same basic behaviour documented on MDN:

4. Serialise the document

echo $document;

Casting the document to a string serialises it back to markup.

For HTMLDocument, the output always includes a doctype and the root document structure:

<!doctype html>
<html><head></head><body><h1>Hello, <span class="name">Cody</span>!</h1></body></html>

5. Create nodes instead of concatenating HTML when practical

innerHTML and outerHTML are supported, but when we are constructing a few nodes programmatically it is often clearer to use DOM methods directly:

$list = $document->createElement("ul");

foreach(["Tea", "Milk", "Biscuits"] as $item) {
	$li = $document->createElement("li");
	$li->innerText = $item;
	$list->appendChild($li);
}

$document->body->appendChild($list);

MDN references:

6. Keep the right level of abstraction

If you find yourself doing lots of this:

$document->querySelector(".customer-name")->innerText = $customer->name;
$document->querySelector(".customer-email")->innerText = $customer->email;
$document->querySelector(".customer-tier")->innerText = $customer->tier;

it is worth pausing and asking whether the real problem is template binding rather than DOM manipulation. In WebEngine applications especially, DomTemplate is usually the better fit.

Now that we have a document on hand, move on to Parsing documents.

PHP.GT/Dom is a separately maintained component of PHP.GT/WebEngine.

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