How do you rename a tag in SimpleXML through a DOM object?

Question

The problem seems straightforward, but I\'m having trouble getting access to the tag name of a SimpleXMLElement.

Let\'s say I have the follow XML structure:

Answer 1

Here's what's probably the simplest way to copy a node's children and attributes without using XSLT:

function clonishNode(DOMNode $oldNode, $newName, $newNS = null)
{
    if (isset($newNS))
    {
        $newNode = $oldNode->ownerDocument->createElementNS($newNS, $newName);
    }
    else
    {
        $newNode = $oldNode->ownerDocument->createElement($newName);
    }

    foreach ($oldNode->attributes as $attr)
    {
        $newNode->appendChild($attr->cloneNode());
    }

    foreach ($oldNode->childNodes as $child)
    {
        $newNode->appendChild($child->cloneNode(true));
    }

    $oldNode->parentNode->replaceChild($newNode, $oldNode);
}

Which you can use this way:

$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->loadXML('xyz');

$oldNode = $dom->getElementsByTagName('bar')->item(0);
clonishNode($oldNode, 'BXR');

// Same but with a new namespace
//clonishNode($oldNode, 'newns:BXR', 'http://newns');

die($dom->saveXML());

It will replace the old node with a clone with a new name.

Attention though, this is a copy of the original node's content. If you had any variable pointing to the old nodes, they are now invalid.