OK, so maybe PHP's getElementById() is behaving according to spec, but it does not have the behaviour that people *want*...
Below is a global getElementById() function (i.e. not a DOMDocument method) which recursively searches through a document for a certain id value.
/* Find the first element in the document (sub)tree whose id attribute
has the value $id. By default, the entire document is searched - pass
a non-NULL value in $node to search only the subtree below $node. */
function getElementById(DOMDocument $doc, /*string*/ $id,
DOMNode $node = NULL) {
if ($node === NULL) return getElementById($doc, $id, $doc->documentElement);
$children = $node->childNodes;
for ($i = 0; $i < $children->length; ++$i) {
$elem = $children->item($i);
if (!($elem instanceof DOMElement)) continue;
if ($elem->getAttribute('id') == $id) return $elem;
$ret = getElementById($doc, $id, $elem);
if ($ret !== NULL) return $ret;
}
return NULL;
}