PHP DOMElement::getElementsByTagName - Anyway to get just the immediate matching children?

Question

is there a way to retrieve only the immediate children found by a call to DOMElement::getElementsByTagName? For example, I have an XML document that has a category element.

Answer 1

Something like this should do

/**
 * Traverse an elements children and collect those nodes that
 * have the tagname specified in $tagName. Non-recursive
 *
 * @param DOMElement $element
 * @param string $tagName
 * @return array
 */
function getImmediateChildrenByTagName(DOMElement $element, $tagName)
{
    $result = array();
    foreach($element->childNodes as $child)
    {
        if($child instanceof DOMElement && $child->tagName == $tagName)
        {
            $result[] = $child;
        }
    }
    return $result;
}

edit: added instanceof DOMElement check