Javascript and XML...how to convert an Xslt file to DOM obj

krraleigh · December 9th, 2009, 07:04 PM

Working through the Javascript book "Professional Javascript for Web Developers" by Wrox, author "Zakas".
In particular I am working through his section on how to handle XML processing in Javascript.

The book gives a really good cross browser function for handling xslt transformation, but it stops short in
telling me how to create a dom object out of an xslt file. "myfile.xslt"

I have never worked with any of the XML methods or properties before so I am not really sure of what I am
looking for. I do have a function that creates a dom object from an xml string that is cross browser functional.
Can I use this function to create an xslt dom object;

Code:

 
function parseXml(xml){
    
    var xmldom = null;
    
    if(typeof DOMParser != "undefined"){
        xmldom = (new DOMParser()).parseFromString(xml, "text/xml");
        var errors = xmldom.getElementsByTagName('parseError');
        if(errors.length){
            throw new Error{"xml parsing error:" + errors[0].textContent);
        }
    } else if (document.implementation.hasFeature("LS", "3.0")){
        var i = document.implementation;
        var parser = i.createLSParser(i.MODE_SYNCHRONOUS, null);
        var input = i.createLSInput();
        input.stringData =xml;
        xmldom = parser.parse(input); // if this fails it automatically throws an error with the data
    }else if(typeof ActiveXObject != "undefined"){
        var xmldom = createDocument();
        xmldom.loadXML(xml);
        if(xmldom.parseError != 0){
            throw new Error("xml parsing error: " + xmldom.parseError.reason);
        }
    } else {
        throw new Error("no parser available");
    }
    return xmldom;
} // end cross browser function for creating DOM object from strings
 
function createDocument(){
    
    if(typeof arguments.calle.activeXString != "string"){
        var versions = ["MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0", "MSXML2.DOMDocument.3.0", "MSXML2.DOMDocument"];
        
        for(var i=0, len=versions.length; i<len; i++){
            try{
                var xmldom = new ActiveXObject(versions[i]);
                arguments.calle.activeXString = versions[i];
                return xmldom;
            } catch (ex) {
                //skip
            }
        }
    }
    return new ActiveXObject(arguments.callee.activeXString);
}
var xmldom = parseXml("my xml string");

The book on page 540 and 541 shows how to create an xslt dom object using the function:

createThreadSafeDocument()

but it doesn't give an idea on how to create the apropriate code for other browsers. The above is an IE only approach.

I searched on the web but maybe I am using the wrong search criteria
Can you advise?

thanx
Kevin

nzakas · December 9th, 2009, 09:55 PM

An XSLT file is just an XML file, so you can load it into a DOM in the exact same way as you would any other XML file. Only IE has the concept of FreeThreadedDocument, all other browsers just use the same DOM document object as they do for XML.