Create DomElement from html string in PHP. You need to use DomDocument and than extract your element.

getDomElementFromHtml.php

/**
@param string $html
@return \DomElement
*/
function getDomElementFromHtml($html)
{
    $document = new \DOMDocument();
    $document->loadHTML($html);
    return $document->getElementsByTagName('*')->item(0);
}

$html = '<a href="https://example.com">Example.com</a>';
$linkDomElement = getDomElementFromHtml($html);
echo $linkDomElement->textContent; // Example.com