dojox.xml

Authors:Tom Trenka, Jared Jurkiewicz

The goal of DojoX XML Utilities is provide differing XML utilities for use in various places in a consolidated package to eliminate code duplication. Currently this includes a native JS DomParser that converts XML to a JS object tree. It also includes several general utility XML functions, such as a function to construct new XML Doms in a browser independent fashion, produce XML text from an XML DOM, and do things such as getting all the text content under a node in a browser agnostic way.

Generic XML Text to DOM parser and XML DOM utility functions

The dojox.xml.parser utility library contains numerous functions for working with XML text and XML dom. The functions it provides are listed below:

  • XML Text to XML DOM parser ( dojox.xml.parser.parse(someXMLText) )
  • XML DOM to XML Text parser ( dojox.xml.parser.innerXML(someDOM) )
  • Getting and setting text content on a node: ( dojox.xml.parser.textContent(node, “optional text to set”) )

Example 1: Generic XML DOM Parser and utilities

dojo.require("dojox.xml.parser");

dojo.ready(function(){
   // Parse text and generate an XML DOM
   var xml = "<tnode><node>Some Text</node><node>Some Other Text</node></tnode>";
   var dom = dojox.xml.parser.parse(xml);

   // Walk DOM and attach into the display how many child nodes were parsed out.
   var ap = dojo.byId("xmlContent");
   var docNode = dom.documentElement;
   ap.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Document contains: " + docNode.childNodes.length + " elements"));
   ap.appendChild(document.createElement("br"));
   ap.appendChild(document.createElement("br"));

   // Write text content into the display.
   for(var i = 0; i < docNode.childNodes.length; i++){
     ap.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Element: [" + i + "] contains text: " + dojox.xml.parser.textContent(docNode.childNodes[i])));
     ap.appendChild(document.createElement("br"));
   }

   // Write out the XML text obtained from converting the DOM back.
   ap.appendChild(document.createElement("br"));
   ap.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Document XML: " + dojox.xml.parser.innerXML(docNode)));
   ap.appendChild(document.createElement("br"));
   ap.appendChild(document.createElement("br"));
});
<div id="xmlContent"></div>

Generic XML DOM to JS Object tree parser

The second helper class is the dojox.xml.DomParser. This utility function will parse an XML text string into a JS Object tree that is structured similarly to the XML dom. This is done completely with regular expressions and avoids any usage of browser parsers. It is very efficient.

Example 2: Generic XML DOM to JS Object parser

dojo.require("dojox.xml.DomParser");

function init(){
   // Parse text and generate an JS DOM
   var xml = "<tnode><node>Some Text</node><node>Some Other Text</node></tnode>";
   var jsdom = dojox.xml.DomParser.parse(xml);

   console.debug(jsdom);
}
dojo.ready(init);
Look in the console for debug statements showing the constructed JS DOM like structure.
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