jQuery XML parsing with namespaces

Question

I'm new to jQuery and would like to parse an xml document.

I'm able to parse regular XML with the default namespaces but with xml such as:

<xml xmlns:s="uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882" xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema">
   <s:Schema id="RowsetSchema">
     <s:ElementType name="row" content="eltOnly" rs:CommandTimeout="30">
       <s:AttributeType name="ows_ID" rs:name="ID" rs:number="1">
        <s:datatype dt:type="i4" dt:maxLength="4" />
      </s:AttributeType>
       <s:AttributeType name="ows_DocIcon" rs:name="Type" rs:number="2">
        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />
      </s:AttributeType>
       <s:AttributeType name="ows_LinkTitle" rs:name="Title" rs:number="3">
        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />
      </s:AttributeType>
       <s:AttributeType name="ows_ServiceCategory" rs:name="Service Category" rs:number="4">
        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />
      </s:AttributeType>
    </s:ElementType>
  </s:Schema>
   <rs:data>
    <z:row ows_ID="2" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 1" />
    <z:row ows_ID="3" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 2" />
    <z:row ows_ID="4" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 3" />
  </rs:data>
</xml>

All I really want are the <z:row>'s.

So far, I've been doing:

$.get(xmlPath, {}, function(xml) {
    $("rs:data", xml).find("z:row").each(function(i) {
        alert("found zrow");
    });
}, "xml");

With really no luck. Any ideas? Thanks.

Answer 1

Although the above answer seems to be correct, it does not work in webkit browsers (Safari, Chrome). A better solution I believe would be:

.find("[nodeName=z:myRow, myRow]")    

Answer 2

The "\\" escaping isn't foolproof and the simple

.find('[nodeName="z:row"]')

Method seems to have been broken as of Jquery 1.7. I was able to find a solution for 1.7 , using a filter function, here: Improving Javascript XML Node Finding Performance

Answer 3

It's worth noting that as of jQuery 1.7 there were issues with some of the work-arounds for finding namespaced elements. See these links for more information:

• jQuery Bug Ticket noting the lack of cross-browser support for the ability to do .find('[nodeName="z:row"]')
• A suggested plug-in workaround with some performance tests.

Answer 4

I have spent several hours on this reading about plugins and all sorts of solutions with no luck.

ArnisAndy posted a link to a jQuery discussion, where this answer is offered and I can confirm that this works for me in Chrome(v18.0), FireFox(v11.0), IE(v9.08) and Safari (v5.1.5) using jQuery (v1.7.2).

I am trying to scrape a WordPress feed where content is named <content:encoded> and this is what worked for me:

content: $this.find("content\\:encoded, encoded").text()

Answer 5

I have not seen any documentation on using JQuery to parse XML. JQuery typically uses the Browser dom to browse an HTML document, I don't believe it reads the html itself.

You should probably look at the built in XML handling in JavaScript itself.

http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/definitive2/

Answer 6

Alternatively, you can use fast-xml-parser in your project, and convert the XML data into JS/JSON object. Then you can use it as object property. It doesn't use JQuery or other libraries but it'll solve your purpose.

var xmlData = '<xml xmlns:s="uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882" xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema">'
+'   <s:Schema id="RowsetSchema">'
+'     <s:ElementType name="row" content="eltOnly" rs:CommandTimeout="30">'
+'       <s:AttributeType name="ows_ID" rs:name="ID" rs:number="1">'
+'        <s:datatype dt:type="i4" dt:maxLength="4" />'
+'      </s:AttributeType>'
+'       <s:AttributeType name="ows_DocIcon" rs:name="Type" rs:number="2">'
+'        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />'
+'      </s:AttributeType>'
+'       <s:AttributeType name="ows_LinkTitle" rs:name="Title" rs:number="3">'
+'        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />'
+'      </s:AttributeType>'
+'       <s:AttributeType name="ows_ServiceCategory" rs:name="Service Category" rs:number="4">'
+'        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />'
+'      </s:AttributeType>'
+'    </s:ElementType>'
+'  </s:Schema>'
+'   <rs:data>'
+'    <z:row ows_ID="2" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 1" />'
+'    <z:row ows_ID="3" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 2" />'
+'    <z:row ows_ID="4" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 3" />'
+'  </rs:data>'
+'</xml>'

var jsObj = parser.parse(xmlData,{attrPrefix:"",ignoreTextNodeAttr: false});
document.write(JSON.stringify(jsObj.xml["rs:data"]["z:row"][0],null,4) + "<br>");
document.write(JSON.stringify(jsObj.xml["rs:data"]["z:row"][1],null,4) + "<br>");
document.write(JSON.stringify(jsObj.xml["rs:data"]["z:row"][2],null,4) + "<br>");

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/fast-xml-parser/2.9.2/parser.min.js"></script>

You can ignore namespaces while parsing to js/json object. In this case you can directly access as jsObj.xml.data.row.

for(var i=0; i< jsObj.xml.data.row.length; i++){
  console.log(jsObj.xml.data.row[i]);
}

Disclaimer: I've created fast-xml-parser.