howto display an XMLDocument object with javascript?

Question

My problem is the following: In my javascript, I load an XML document from a server.

var xmlDom =  document.implementation.createDocument("","",null);
xmlDom.async=false;
xmlDom.load("init.xml");

The user can then modify this XML Document by editing various form elements of the displayed webpage. When finished, I'd like to open a new browser tab and display the modified xml in there, so that the user can save it. The question is how to do this without sending the xmlDocument to the server and back. My current hack displays nothing on the page but at least shows the xml in the page source.

    xmlWindow = window.open("");
    xmlWindow.document.open("text/xml");
    xmlWindow.document.write(serializer.serializeToString(xmlDom));
    xmlWindow.document.close();
    xmlWindow.focus();

Someone any idea how to do this properly?

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:29:02Z

1

You'll need to HTML encode your XML for it to display. Use < for <, > for >, etc. Surround with the pre tag or put it as the data in document.createTextNode(data).

You can also create a text area in your document in your new window and put the XML string in the textarea.

1 Comment

user306708 Over a year ago

right,that's a start. but what I really like to have is that the xml I have as js object is processed just like an xml file loaded by typing its url into the browser's url bar. Any further idea?

user306708 · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-01 16:31:53Z

1

Finally found a way to get what I want (at least for non-ie browsers). What I use is a so called DataUri which makes it possible to present the XML Document as a link. Clicking on the link causes the browser to process the data just as if I would load it from a server. E.g., xsl-stylesheets are processed. here is the (jQuery) code I'm using:

$('#xmllink').attr('href','data:text/xml,' + xml2Str(xmlDom).replace(/"/gi, "'"));

the function xml2str serializes the xml Document to string.

answered Mar 1, 2011 at 16:31

user306708

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