PHP - DomXPath empty tags

I have a html text.

$htmlString = '
<span class="title">Random title</span>
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Labore aperiam aut iusto quae error tempore nisi consequuntur natus magni fugiat illum, repellat minima quibusdam aliquam dolor deserunt repudiandae quas, laboriosam.
<div class="title">Title with missing <i></i><i></i><i></i><i></i></div>
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Labore aperiam aut iusto quae error tempore nisi consequuntur natus magni fugiat illum, repellat minima quibusdam aliquam dolor deserunt repudiandae quas, laboriosam.
';

From this html I want every tag with the 'title' class. So I did this:

$document = new DOMDocument();
$document->loadHTML($htmlString);

$finder = new DomXPath($document);
$elements = $finder->query("//*[contains(concat(' ', @class, ' '), ' title ')]");

foreach($elements as $index => $element) {
    echo $element->ownerDocument->saveXML( $element ) . PHP_EOL;
}

Its working nicely, but if there is an empty tag inside the text it doesn't work properly.

As you can see the empty <i></i> tags turned into </i>. I need the text with the empty tags. So I changed my code to this:

$document = new DOMDocument();
$document->loadHTML($htmlString);

$finder = new DomXPath($document);
$elements = $finder->query("//*[contains(concat(' ', @class, ' '), ' title ')]");

foreach($elements as $index => $element) {
    //echo $element->ownerDocument->saveXML( $element ) . PHP_EOL;
    echo $element->ownerDocument->saveHTML( $element ) . PHP_EOL; //this is working, but i cant use it becase the php version. im using 5.3.3-7 php version
    //http://php.net/manual/en/domdocument.savehtml.php
}

and its working. BUT on the server the php version is older than 5.4 so I cant use the saveHTML method like this.

How can I make this ?

BTW the php version that I working on is 5.3.3-7

The full code is here: http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/23f5629cbd5a4ae031efc5e3c8ca419043b5a158

Solution

foreach($elements as $index => $element) {
    $dom = new DOMDocument();
    $dom->appendChild($dom->importNode($element,true));
    echo $dom->saveHTML();
}