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Is there a way to have browsers ignore or override xml-stylesheet processing instructions?

Answer 1

A:

As far as I know, there is no way of doing what you are trying to do. The issue is, javascript cannot read the dom of the xml from a client side xml/xsl transform. As far as the javascript is concerned, it is executing on a normal html dom.

However, there may be some hope depending on the type of webapp. You could use ajax to get the xml of the current url. As long as there is no post data, or any other randomness, this method should work fine.

Buddy 2009-04-25 00:20:48

Answer 2

+2 A:

Can't you just do "View Source" in both browsers?

2009-04-25 09:26:46

I don't want to place too much mental effort on the testers. :) But not surprisingly this is looking like the best option so far.

Steven Huwig 2009-04-27 13:01:46

+1 in IE8 and Firefox the source viewer does a very good job of displaying XML.

Martin Peck 2009-05-01 21:57:30

If you want to change the app that views the source (say, to Notepad2) then check out http://dotnet.org.za/thea/archive/2004/11/25/7933.aspx

Martin Peck 2009-05-01 22:03:55

the firefox source browser also accepts ctrl+r to reload the page, which could come in handy.a neat solution would be to put a location bar into the source browser

xkcd150 2009-05-01 22:14:50

Answer 3

+1 A:

You can avoid a processing instruction by using an intermediary step to pre-process the XML before the content is output in the browser.

Client-side suggestion

Retrieve the relevant XML document via an AJAX request
Parse the XML into a DOM (note: a DOM not the DOM)
Traverse the DOM and render in the browser the required data

Server-side suggestion

Instead of directly requesting the pertinent XML document, make a request instead to a proxy script that removed from the XML content all processing instructions, or indeed all that you don't want.

Instead of:

window.location = 'http://example.com/document.xml';

use:

window.location = 'http://example.com/proxy/';

The script at http://example.com/proxy/ would:

Load document.xml
Use whatever is necessary to remove the processing instruction from the XML content
Output the XML content

Jon Cram 2009-04-26 19:21:16

You could have made that shorter by just writing "render a different document or point to a different document."

Steven Huwig 2009-04-27 12:59:37

Answer 4

+2 A:

As long as you wouldn't have to deal with cross domain permissions, a simple ajax request / alert box with the XML source would do the trick. You'll have to add a little bit to the xmlHttp declaration to make it compatible with IE.

<html>
<body>

<script language="JavaScript">
function ajaxFunction()
{

var xmlHttp=new XMLHttpRequest();;

  xmlHttp.onreadystatechange=function()
    {
    if(xmlHttp.readyState==4)
      {
      alert(xmlHttp.responseText);
      }
    }
  xmlHttp.open("GET","YOURFILE.xml",true);
  xmlHttp.send(null);

}
</script>

<a href="#" onclick="JavaScript:ajaxFunction()">Errors</a>

</body>
</html>

oneporter 2009-04-29 01:45:06

Answer 5

+2 A:

EDIT: too bad, though all seemed fine in the preview, the clickable examples seem to mess up things... Maybe the layout is fine in the history.

I've heard, but cannot validate for IE, that both IE and Firefox support the "view-source:" pseudo-protocol. Firefox on Mac indeed understands it, but Safari does not.

The following bookmarklet will not trigger the XSLT transformation specified in the XML. And though Firefox will render this using some colours, it does not execute the default transformation it would normally use for XML without any XSLT (so, the result of view-source does NOT yield a collapsable document tree that Firefox would normally show):

javascript:(function(){
  var u = 'http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/cdcatalog_with_ex1.xml';
  var w = window.open();
  w.document.location.href = 'view-source:' + u;
})()

When fetching the document using Ajax then one is not limited to the alert oneporter used, but can display it in a new window as well. Again: this will not invoke the XSLT transformation that is specified:

javascript:(function(){
  var u = 'http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/cdcatalog_with_ex1.xml';

  var w = window.open(); /* open right away for popup blockers */

  var x = new XMLHttpRequest();
  x.open('GET', u, true); 
  x.onreadystatechange = function(){
    if(x.readyState == 4){
      w.document.open('text/html');
      /* hack to encode HTML entities */
      var d = document.createElement('div'); 
      var t = document.createTextNode(x.responseText); 
      d.appendChild(t);
      w.document.write('<html><body><pre>' 
          + d.innerHTML + '</pre></body></html>');
      w.document.close();
      w.focus();
    }
  };
  x.send(null); 
})()

Arjan 2009-05-01 15:07:15

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Is there a way to have browsers ignore or override xml-stylesheet processing instructions?

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