Parsing responseXML with Prototype's $()

Question

I've got XML coming back from an Ajax.Request in Ajax.Response.responseXML. My XML actually contains XHTML tags which I hope to append into my document.

I'm having issues appending nodes from the responseXML into the current document, however. I suspect that this is because they are XML nodes and not DOM nodes.

Wrapping the responseXML in $() doesn't seem to return an extended version of the nodes, either, and the documentation doesn't say that it will or won't.

Does Prototype provide a way to make use of the responseXML, and if not, is there a cross-browser way to parse the response and use it?

Answer 1

No prototype does not have a native way to parse XML. Nor can you extend the xml with $(xml) and then walk the DOM with .next(),.select(), etc.

Here is an example of what I did recently on a project to manually parse some XML from spell check results. Should get you started.

parseResults: function(results) {
var c = results.responseXML.getElementsByTagName('c');
var corrections = $A(c);
if(!corrections.size()){
  this.link.insert({ after: '<span class="spellCheckNoErrors">No spelling errors</span>' });
  (function(){ this.link.next().remove(); }.bind(this)).delay(1);
  return null;
}
this.res = $A();
corrections.each(function(node){
  sugg = node.childNodes[0].nodeValue;
  offset = node.attributes[0].nodeValue;
  len = node.attributes[1].nodeValue;
        this.res.push(
    $H({
      word: this.text.substr(offset, len),
      suggestions: sugg.split(/\s/)
          })
  );
},this);
this.overlay();
},

Answer 2

Although I accepted Christian's answer as the "correct" answer, a colleage of mine showed me a way to parse an XML response with Prototype.

Rather that using responseXML, you simply create an Element and then update() it with the responseText. You can then use select() and methods like it to traverse the nodes.