file_get_contents() misuse

This I cant seem to figure out. In a nutshell I have a webpage that will change depending on $_GET variables set. When building the webpage there are 2 menus to choose from. These menus are stored in html files.

Here is the line that is reading that file.

$template->set('menu',file_get_contents('../gamefiles/site_menu.html'));

Here is the function that the line is running.

function set($div,$data)
{
    $result = $this->xpath->query("//div[@id = '".$div."']");
    $node = $result->item(0);
    $node->nodeValue = $data;
    $this->dom->saveHTML();
}

Here is what is in the menu file.

<a href=''><div>Home</div></a><br />
<a href=''><div>Documentation</div></a><br />
<a href=''><div>Support</div></a><br />
<a href=''><div>Affiliates</div></a><br />
<a href=''><div>Sign up!</div></a><br />

and here is where my problem is... for some reason its returning

<a href=''><div>Home</div></a><br />
<a href=''><div>Documentation</div></a><br />
<a href=''><div>Support</div></a><br />
<a href=''><div>Affiliates</div></a><br />
<a href=''><div>Sign up!</div></a><br />

file_get_contents() when used alone returns the correct value which leads me to believe the DOMXPath function is doing something to it. Im pretty stumped.

any ideas? thank开发者_如何学运维s in advance

EDIT

adding construct method that creates DOMDoc

function __CONSTRUCT($template)
{
    $this->dom = new DomDocument();
    $this->dom->loadHTML(file_get_contents($this->template_dir.$template));
    $this->xpath = new DomXPath($this->dom);
}

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Not sure what charset you sending in the header, but I've run into something similar before and that was the issue. Try using:

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');