Published: Wednesday, May 10, 2000
Getting Started with XML, Part 2
Read Part 1
In Part 1 we looked at a basic XML file that stored
widget information. In this part we'll look at how to use the XMLDOM to parse through
the XML file created in Part 1.
Microsoft provides the XML DOM (Document Object Model) to assist with
parsing an XML document. This DOM can be accessed through the browser if it is an XML-enabled
browser (Internet Explorer 5.0) using client-side script; the XML DOM is also available on
the server-side. To create an instance of the XML DOM, use the following line of code:
Dim objXMLDOM
Set objXMLDOM = Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
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Internet Explorer 5.0 must be installed on your Web server for this to work. If it
is not you will get an error when trying to create an instance of the Microsoft.XMLDOM
component.
There are a ton of methods, properties, and events for the XML DOM, all of which can
be found on Microsoft's
XML Documentation Site. For the remainder of this article we will be using the
XML document created in Part 1, widget.xml.
To load a document into the XML parser, use the load method like so:
Dim objXMLDOM
Set objXMLDOM = Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
'load the widget.xml document
objXMLDOM.load(Server.MapPath("widget.xml"))
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Since the load method expects the physical path of the XML document,
we used the Server.MapPath method.
Then, use a number of the XML methods to iterate through the document. When loaded, the
root node becomes the active node. In the widget.xml XML file, the widgets
tag was the root node. We can use the childElements collection to iterate
through all of the root node's children like so:
for each objChild in objXMLDOM.documentElement.childNodes
Response.write objChild.NodeName & " - "
response.write objChild.Text & "<BR>"
next
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The NodeName property displays the name of the node (widget)
while the Text property lists the contents of the node. The XML DOM is a very
collection-intensive tool - when iterating through an XML document you usually will need
to visit each node; each node will have a collection of children nodes, which, in turn,
might each have a collection of children nodes themselves, and so on... For more information
on these collections it is highly recommended that you check out
Microsoft's
XML Documentation Site.
See a live demo of the code presented above!
Happy Programming!
Attachments:
View the widget.xml XML document
Recommended Articles/Sites/Books:
XML101.com
Professional XML Design & Implementation
Microsoft's
XML Documentation Site
