XML & Netscape

Greg Griffiths · February 9th, 2004, 05:29 PM

Dear All,
I'm using the following code in my webpage to load an XML file into a set of arrays - for use by another JS Application - but for some reason in Netscape it fails to find any elements in the XML file,
the code is :

Code:

var text = new Array();
var header = new Array();
var linka = new Array();
var targa = new Array();
var newsItems;
var xmldoc;

// for DOM2 including NN 6 & 7
if (document.implementation && document.implementation.createDocument)
{
    // create the XML Doc
    xmldoc = document.implementation.createDocument("", "", null);

    // define a function to run on load
    xmldoc.onload=function(){pop_ticker();}
}

// for IE
else if (window.ActiveXObject)
{
    // create a new XML object for IE
    xmldoc=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");

    // define some attributes of the doc
    xmldoc.async = false;

    // define a function to run on load
    xmldoc.onreadystatechange=function(){if(xmldoc.readyState == 4){pop_ticker();}}
}

// for the rest
else
{
    alert('Your browser can\'t handle this script');
}

//load the XML file in
xmldoc.load('news.xml');

// this is the function that populates the arryas from the XML so that the ticker will work
function pop_ticker()
{
    // load the news items from the XML file
    newsItems = xmldoc.getElementsByTagName("newselement");

    // populate the Arrays from the XML file
    for (var i=0;i<newsItems.length;i++)
    {
        // add the elements of the ticker item
        text[i]=newsItems[i].getElementsByTagName("headline")[0].firstChild.data;
        header[i]=newsItems[i].getElementsByTagName("newsitem")[0].firstChild.data;
        linka[i]=newsItems[i].getElementsByTagName("newslink")[0].firstChild.data;
        targa[i]=newsItems[i].getElementsByTagName("newstarget")[0].firstChild.data;

        if (targa[i]=="a")
        {
            targa[i]="";
        }
    }
}

and a snippet of the XML file is :

Code:

<newsticker>
    <newselement>
        <headline>Stop invalid characters in Object Names</headline>
        <newsitem>New Customisation</newsitem>
        <newslink>customisations/fortyeight/</newslink>
        <newstarget>a</newstarget>
    </newselement>
    <newselement>
        <headline>DB Upgrade Status bug fix</headline>
        <newsitem>New Customisation</newsitem>
        <newslink>customisations/fortyseven/</newslink>
        <newstarget>a</newstarget>
    </newselement>
</newsticker>

any ideas ?

joefawcett · February 10th, 2004, 09:51 AM

You posted a similar question before and I said that I thought it was because Netscape always loads asynchronously and that the document hadn't loaded when you tried to query it. When pop_ticker runs can you alert the contents of the xml document to make sure it is available? I don't have NN on this machine to test myself.

--

Joe

Greg Griffiths · February 10th, 2004, 07:54 PM

When I do an :

alert(xmldoc)

as the first line in the popticker function, NN7.1 returns :

[ObjectXMLDocument]

does that help ?

joefawcett · February 11th, 2004, 11:58 AM

What does alert(xmldoc.xml) show?

--

Joe

Greg Griffiths · February 11th, 2004, 07:29 PM

It returns :

undefined

joefawcett · February 12th, 2004, 09:56 AM

As I am on a temporary machine I don't have Netscape but I will investigate further when I get home. Presumably the xml property does not exist in the Netscape xml document model.

Good luck.

--

Joe

Greg Griffiths · February 12th, 2004, 06:34 PM

While the command not being supported is possible, I've rechecked the code from the article I got it from - http://builder.com.com/5100-6389_14-5109488.html - and can' spot anything different, they even have a working demo - http://img.com.com/i/tr/bldr/Ticker/exampleD.html.

joefawcett · February 15th, 2004, 09:50 AM

After installing latest version of Mozilla I managed to test script below. Works fine. Does JavaScript console show any messages whilst running script?

Code:

<script type="text/javascript">
var text = new Array();
var header = new Array();
var linka = new Array();
var targa = new Array();
var newsItems;
var xmldoc;

// for DOM2 including NN 6 & 7
if (document.implementation && document.implementation.createDocument)
{

    // create the XML Doc
    xmldoc = document.implementation.createDocument("", "", null);

    // define a function to run on load
    xmldoc.onload=function(){pop_ticker();}
    Node.prototype.__defineGetter__("xml", _Node_getXML);
}

// for IE
else if (window.ActiveXObject)
{
    // create a new XML object for IE
    xmldoc=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");

    // define some attributes of the doc
    xmldoc.async = false;

    // define a function to run on load
    xmldoc.onreadystatechange=function(){if(xmldoc.readyState == 4){pop_ticker();}}

}

// for the rest
else
{
    alert('Your browser can\'t handle this script');
}

function _Node_getXML()
 {

    //create a new XMLSerializer
    var objXMLSerializer = new XMLSerializer;

    //get the XML string
    var strXML = objXMLSerializer.serializeToString(this);

    //return the XML string
    return strXML;
}

//load the XML file in
xmldoc.load('news.xml');

// this is the function that populates the arryas from the XML so that the ticker will work
function pop_ticker()
{
    alert(xmldoc.xml);
    // load the news items from the XML file
    newsItems = xmldoc.getElementsByTagName("newselement");

    // populate the Arrays from the XML file
    for (var i=0;i<newsItems.length;i++)
    {
        // add the elements of the ticker item
        text[i]=newsItems[i].getElementsByTagName("headline")[0].firstChild.data;
        header[i]=newsItems[i].getElementsByTagName("newsitem")[0].firstChild.data;
        linka[i]=newsItems[i].getElementsByTagName("newslink")[0].firstChild.data;
        targa[i]=newsItems[i].getElementsByTagName("newstarget")[0].firstChild.data;

        if (targa[i]=="a")
        {
            targa[i]="";
        }
        alert(text[i]);
    }
}


</script>

--

Joe

Greg Griffiths · February 19th, 2004, 07:59 PM

no change unfortunately.

joefawcett · February 20th, 2004, 07:08 AM

Well it works fine for me on two machines. I read a post in google.groups that said that the xml features were unreliable in the earlier versions. What version are you running? Does the JavaScript console show any messages?

--

Joe