How to Get XML Document from iFrame

rvanandel · July 16th, 2007, 12:26 PM

I am having trouble getting the xml object out of an iFrame. I'm using an iFrame to upload a document, which does xmlhttprequest doesn't seem to support. I'm trying the following script, which works great in FireFox but not in IE.

I have tried creating an XML document but could not figure out how load the contents using the a script I found at http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/importxml.html but I could not figure out how to load the contents of my iFrame into the xmlDoc created using the script there.

What can I do to get IE to recognize that the source of the iFrame is an XML document?

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/ajaxobject.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">
function showContent(i) {
    var theXML = i.contentWindow.document;
    var errors = new Array()    
    var count = 0;
    xml_errors = theXML.getElementsByTagName("error");
    //check if any errros were returned
    if(xml_errors.length>0) {
        //loop through those errors
        for(i=0;i<xml_errors.length;i++) {
            //and if there is any data to display
            if(xml_errors[i].firstChild) {
                //assign it to the errors array.
                errors[i] = xml_errors[i].firstChild.nodeValue;
                count++;
            }
        }
    }

    if(errors.length) {
        alert(errors[0]);
    }
    else {
        alert("You're golden");
    }

}
</script>    
</head>

<body>
<p>I Frame</p>
<iframe id="iFrame" width="400" height="500" src="xml.php" onload="showContent(this)"></iframe>
</body>
</html>

And the XML src file is

Code:

<?PHP 
header("content-type:text/xml");
echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>' ;
?>

<stuff>
    <name>Robbert</name>
    <name>Kelly</name>
    <name>Jonathon</name>
    <name>Carl</name>
    <error>Uh Oh</error>
</stuff>

I changed

zaerymoghaddam · July 16th, 2007, 11:39 PM

Hi rvanandel

The 'document' object in IE is not an xml document. It's a DHTML document and has some useful methods and properties to manipulate HTML document dynamically. If you need to access loaded document as a DOM document, you can use 'XMLDocument' property of this object. Meaning, you should change your code to something like this :

var theXML = i.contentWindow.document.XMLDocument;

Ehsan Zaery Moghaddam

rvanandel · July 17th, 2007, 10:23 AM

Thank you, that did the trick.

chihpin · May 30th, 2008, 01:43 AM

Very great!!!!!!!

mfulton · April 9th, 2009, 07:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zaerymoghaddam

The 'document' object in IE is not an xml document. It's a DHTML document and has some useful methods and properties to manipulate HTML document dynamically. If you need to access loaded document as a DOM document, you can use 'XMLDocument' property of this object. Meaning, you should change your code to something like this :

var theXML = i.contentWindow.document.XMLDocument;

In IE7, the line above throws an "Access Denied" error.

joefawcett · April 10th, 2009, 04:04 AM

This can happen if the iframe's domain and the main window are not the same or even if they are being accessed via a different protocol.

mfulton · April 10th, 2009, 05:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joefawcett

This can happen if the iframe's domain and the main window are not the same or even if they are being accessed via a different protocol.

Yah that's what was going on... fortunately I found another way to accomplish my end goal.