[OT?] content of text nodes

I'm sorry if this is considered off-topic for this list, but I would
like to have something resolved, and this seems like the place where I
will get a correct answer :)

Because in the current version of PHP (4.3) domxml lists get_content()
and set_content() as deprecated, I was wondering what are the "correct"
ways of:

(1) retrieving the content of a text node

(2) changing the content of a text node

(3) setting the content when there is no text child

My current solutions are:

(1)

$nodeset = $dom->get_elements_by_tagname("test");
$first_node = $nodeset[0];
$text_node = $first_node->first_child();
if ($text_node->node_type == XML_TEXT_NODE)
	$content = $text_node->node_value;
}

(2)

For this, if we can't use set_content, we have to actually replace the
text node which seems wasteful:

$nodeset = $dom->get_elements_by_tagname("test");
$first_node = $nodeset[0];
$text_node = $first_node->first_child();
$new_node = $dom->create_text_node("new content");
$text_node->replace($new_node);

(3)

$nodeset = $dom->get_elements_by_tagname("test");
$first_node = $nodeset[0];
if (!$first_node->first_child()){
	$new_node = $dom->create_text_node("first content");
	$first_node->append_child($new_node);
}

Any clarity, corrections or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Eric