The Microsoft XML Parser

To read and update - create and manipulate - an XML document, you need an XML parser.

Using the XML parser

The Microsoft XML parser comes with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0.

Once you have installed IE 5.0, the parser is available to scripts, both inside HTML documents and inside ASP files. The parser features a language-neutral programming model that supports:

JavaScript, VBScript, Perl, VB, Java, C++ and more
W3C XML 1.0 and XML DOM
DTD and validation

If you are using JavaScript in IE 5.0, you can create an XML document object with the following code:

var xmlDoc=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")

If you are using VBScript, you create the XML document object with the following code:

set xmlDoc=CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")

If you are using VBScript in ASP, you can use the following code:

set xmlDoc=Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")

Loading an XML file into the parser

XML files can be loaded into the parser using script code.

The following code loads an XML document (note.xml) into the XML parser:

<script type="text/javascript">
var xmlDoc = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xmlDoc.async="false"
xmlDoc.load("note.xml")
// ....... processing the document goes here
</script>

The second line in the code above creates an instance of the Microsoft XML parser.

The third line turns off asynchronized loading, to make sure that the parser will not continue execution before the document is fully loaded.

The fourth line tells the parser to load the XML document called note.xml.

Loading pure XML text into the parser

XML text can also be loaded from a text string.

The following code loads a text string into the XML parser:

<script type="text/javascript">

var text="<note>"
text=text+"<to>Tove</to><from>Jani</from>"
text=text+"<heading>Reminder</heading>"
text=text+"<body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>"
text=text+"</note>"

var xmlDoc = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xmlDoc.async="false"
xmlDoc.loadXML(text)
// ....... processing the document goes here
</script>

Note that the "loadXML" method (instead of the "load" method) is used to load a text string.

Displaying XML with JavaScript

To display XML you can use JavaScript.

JavaScript (or VBScript) can be used to import data from an XML file and display the XML data inside an HTML page.

To see how XML and HTML complement each other this way; first look at the XML document (note.xml), then open the HTML document (note.htm) that contains a JavaScript which reads the XML file and displays the information inside predefined spans in the HTML page.

To see how it works, Try It Yourself

You can see a lot more of this kind of JavaScript in our DOM School.

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