You have yet to deny it. Are you saying it's textContent you can't fathom? Maybe it's both!! You never did say which one was so cryptic you had to consult the docs.

• parse_file parses the file.
• $root = documentElement gets the root element.
• $node->textContent gets the node's text content.
• $node->findnodes('elem') finds "elem" nodes under the current node.
• $node->appendText appends text to the node.
• toFile puts the XML in a file.