innerXML

[Philipp Lenssen]

Why isn't there a way in standard DOM to access all XML of a node? (Similar to what outerHTML and innerHTML can do on Firefox or Internet Explorer when accessing HTML.)
Or am I missing something?

 

[Martin Honnen]

Why isn't there a way in standard DOM to access all XML of a node? (Similar to what outerHTML and innerHTML can do on Firefox or Internet Explorer when accessing HTML.)
Or am I missing something?

Well outerXml, that is the serialization of the node itself can certainly be achieved with W3C DOM Level 3 Load and Save e.g. with Opera
7.60 Preview you can do

function getOuterXml (node) {
if (node.ownerDocument && node.ownerDocument.implementation && document.implementation.createLSSerializer && (serializer = node.ownerDocument.implementation.createLSSerializer)) { return serializer.writeToString(node); } }

getOuterXml(someNode)

I think Java 1.5 (also named Java 5.0) also implements DOM Level 3 Load and Save so there you are also able to serialize a node with standard
DOM ways:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/index.html

And innerXml only requires you to serialize all child nodes and concatenate the results.

 

[Philipp Lenssen]

And innerXml only requires you to serialize all child nodes and concatenate the results.

I did that once in Visual Basic. Of course it takes some efforts, and I wonder, really wonder -- and I'm not the only one, my colleagues wonder as well -- why this is not in the basic DOM (innerXML and outerXML).

I'm using PHP5. Any code samples are very welcome. Both Outer and InnerXML would be great.

 

[Martin Honnen]

Philipp Lenssen wrote:

I'm using PHP5. Any code samples are very welcome. Both Outer and InnerXML would be great.

According to the docs all you need for "OuterXml" is
xmlDocument->saveXML(node)
as documented here
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.dom-domdocument-savexml.php For "InnerXml" you would then need to concatenate the OuterXml of all child nodes:
function getInnerXml ($node) {
$innerXml = '';
$xmlDoc = $node->ownerDocument;
for ($i = 0; $i < $node->childNodes->length; $i++) {
$innerXml .= $xmlDoc->saveXML($node->childNodes[$i]);
}
return $innerXml;
}

All untested as I currently here do not have PHP 5 installed.

 

[Philipp Lenssen]

Philipp Lenssen wrote:

According to the docs all you need for "OuterXml" is
xmlDocument->saveXML(node)
as documented here
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.dom-domdocument-savexml.php

Thanks a lot Martin, that'll do! I will try "saveXML".

 

[Philipp Lenssen]

Thanks a lot Martin, that'll do! I will try "saveXML".

Works like a charm.

 

[Martin Honnen]

Martin Honnen wrote:

For "InnerXml" you would then need to concatenate the OuterXml of all child nodes:
function getInnerXml ($node) {
$innerXml = '';
$xmlDoc = $node->ownerDocument;
for ($i = 0; $i < $node->childNodes->length; $i++) {
$innerXml .= $xmlDoc->saveXML($node->childNodes[$i]);

The square bracket access to childNodes doesn't work so you need

function getInnerXml ($node) {
$innerXml = '';
$xmlDoc = $node->ownerDocument;
for ($i = 0; $i < $node->childNodes->length; $i++) {
$innerXml .= $xmlDoc->saveXML($node->childNodes->item($i)); } return $innerXml; }

but then it works fine.