Convert String to XML Document in JavaScript

Question

Saw this example on the jQuery examples page for Ajax:

var xmlDocument = [create xml document]; $.ajax({         url: "page.php",         processData: false,         data: xmlDocument,         success: someFunction     }); 

How do I take a string like:

var t = '<foo><bar>something</bar></foo>';   

And convert that to a XML DOM object? cross-browser?

UPDATE: Please see comments to karim79's answer.

Answer 1

Wrap it in a jQuery object. Then use jQuery's normal DOM manipulation methods on it.

var t = $('<foo><bar>something</bar></foo>');  //loop over 'bar' nodes t.find('bar').each(function () {     alert($(this).text()); }); 

If you want to convert it back to a plain string (after modifying it for example) you can do it like so:

//then convert it back to a string //for IE  if (window.ActiveXObject) {     var str = t.xml;     alert(str);  } // code for Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, etc. else {    var str = (new XMLSerializer()).serializeToString(t);    alert(str); } 

EDIT: The $.ajax manual says (on the processData option):

By default, data passed in to the data option as an object (technically, anything other than a string) will be processed and transformed into a query string, fitting to the default content-type "application/x-www-form-urlencoded". If you want to send DOMDocuments, or other non-processed data, set this option to false.

So if you're passing a jQuery object to the server, you'll need to set that to true, or omit it altogether (it is set to true by default). Hope that helped.