Replacing document.write()s in an xhtml+xml page

Question

I work for a company that writes software which client sites embed with < script language="JavaScript" src=..... etc. etc. We depend quite a bit on document.write to write elements out to the page. One of our clients for some reason has opted to use the content-type "application/xhtml+xml", which makes document.write() unusable in chrome.

I understand why this is, and that DOM-compliant code should create each element, set its attributes, fill it with a text node if needed, attach the text node to its parent and the parent to some page element....

but what's a good workaround that doesn't require all this junk? The write()s therein have so many elements that the resulting code would be hideous if we made nodes and fastened them together like Knex or Legos or what-have-you.

edit: Tried using CDATA, but even this line is condemned similarly by the xhtml parser on the same page as our script embed:

Answer 1

var el = document.createElement('div');
el.innerHTML = 'What you used to document.write()';
document.body.appendChild(el);

Note that you'll need to fix the HTML to be valid XHTML, but that should be much less work than converting all the code to use DOM manipulation.

Answer 2

We've been using Jquery and set timeouts to rewrite code supplied to us by similar organisations to yours. Here's an example from Search Ignite:

<script>
<!--
// once all the page has loaded
$(document).ready(function ()
    {
        // wait a bit so everything else that runs when the page has loaded loads, then...
        setTimeout(function ()
        {
            // ...load the tracking stuff
            var headerTag = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
            var seo_tag = $.createElement(document.location.protocol + "//track.searchignite.com/si/CM/Tracking/ClickTracking.aspx?siclientid=123456&jscript=1", "script");
            headerTag.appendChild(seo_tag);

        }, 20);
    });
// -->
</script>

The timeout has the added benefit of making our page responsive to the user before the the external code has been loaded by the users browser, very useful if the external supplier's servers ever go down. Yes we loose some tracking stats but the user experience is not compromised.

Obviously you won't be able to rely on JQuery but you get the general idea.

Answer 3

Perhaps you can create an iframe of type text/html, write the content into that, and then import the nodes back into the main page.