writing XML files with jQuery

Question

Hey,

chaning xml attributes through jquery is easy-peasy, just:

$(this).attr('name', 'hello');

but how can I add another tag into the file? I tried using append the JS dies silently.

Is there any way to do this?

Clarifications: this code is part of an extension to firefox, so don't worry about saving into the user file system. Still append doesn't work for xml documents yet I can change xml attribute values

Answer 1

I'd suggest you walk through the code with a debugger and see if you can determine why the append is causing an error (or if the error is someplace else). Something like:

$('selector').append('<p></p>');

should work just fine.

Answer 2

You'll have to send your altered xml back to a web service for saving server-side. Would you want client side javascript saving files to your file system?

Answer 3

You can create elements simply by $('<div></div>'), or even $('<div />') , and adding them to your document using any of the Manipulation Methods. This should work for xml too, though I've only used it in the DOM so far.
Of course, you cannot save an XML file from javascript.

Answer 4

The problem is that jQuery is creating the new node in the current document of the web page, so in result the node can't be appended to a different XML Document. So the node must be created in the XML Document.

You can do this like so

var xml = $('<?xml version="1.0"?><foo><bar></bar><bar></bar></foo>'); // Your xml
var xmlCont = $('<xml>'); // You create a XML container
xmlCont.append(xml); // You append your XML to the Container created in the main document

// Now you can append without problems to you xml
xmlCont.find('foo bar:first').append('<div />');

xmlCont.find('foo bar div'); // Test so you can see it works