PHP Warning

PHP Warning (Attempt to read property “childNodes” on null) in simple-html-to-markdown.php

Hi there,

I noticed a PHP warning in my server logs caused by the Meerkat Markdown for AI Visibility plugin. The error occurs under PHP 8.5.x when the HTML-to-Markdown parser encounters an unexpected or empty node.

Error Log:

Plaintext

[proxy_fcgi:error] AH01071: Got error 'PHP message: PHP Warning: Attempt to read property "childNodes" on null in /wp-content/plugins/meerkat-markdown-for-ai-visibility/includes/simple-html-to-markdown.php on line 50; PHP message: PHP Warning: foreach() argument must be of type array|object, null given in /wp-content/plugins/meerkat-markdown-for-ai-visibility/includes/simple-html-to-markdown.php on line 50'

Cause: In includes/simple-html-to-markdown.php, the method process_nodes( $node ) receives $node which can sometimes be null (either on the initial call or during recursion). Line 50 tries to access $node->childNodes directly without validating the variable first.

Suggested Fix: Adding a simple guard clause at the very beginning of the process_nodes function resolves the issue cleanly:

PHP

private function process_nodes( $node ) {
    if ( ! $node ) {
        return '';
    }

    $markdown = '';

    foreach ( $node->childNodes as $child ) {
        // ... rest of the code

Could you please include a null-check in the next plugin update to prevent these warnings from flooding the logs?

Thank you for your great work!

Best regards,

Frank