How can I change the name of an element in DOM?

Hello,

In PHP with DOM, I have a DomElement object which represents an <identity/> element.

I have one case where I need to change this so its element name is <person/>, but keep the same child elements and attributes.

What would be the simplest way of changing an element name of a DomElement and keeping its children and attributes?

Edit: I have just found a very similar question (though it doesn't have very good answers).

From stackoverflow

• Could you use importNode() to copy the childNodes of your <identity> element to a newly created <person> element?

  function changeName($node, $name) {
      $newnode = $node->ownerDocument->createElement($name);
      foreach ($node->childNodes as $child){
          $child = $node->ownerDocument->importNode($child, true);
          $newnode->appendChild($child, true);
      }
      foreach ($node->attributes as $attrName => $attrNode) {
          $newnode->setAttribute($attrName, $attrNode);
      }
      $newnode->ownerDocument->replaceChild($newnode, $node);
      return $newnode;
  }
  
  $domElement = changeName($domElement, 'person');
  

  Perhaps something like that would work, or you could try using cloneChild().

  Edit: Actually, I just realized that the original function would lose the placement of the node. As per the question thomasrutter linked to, replaceChild() should be used.

  thomasrutter : I may be missing something, but it doesn't look like you can change the node name with importNode()

  Calvin : See the code I just added.

  thomasrutter : Thanks for that. I ended up using a solution very similar to this.