XML application

XML application

This chapter demonstrates some small XML applications built on XML, HTML, XML DOM and JavaScript.

XML document example

In this application, we will use the "cd_catalog.xml" file.

Show first CD in HTML div element

The following example gets the XML data from the first CD element and then displays the data in the HTML element with id="showCD". The displayCD() function is called when the page loads:

Example

 x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("CD");
i=0;

function displayCD()
{
artist=(x[i].getElementsByTagName("ARTIST")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
title=(x[i].getElementsByTagName("TITLE")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
year=(x[i].getElementsByTagName("YEAR")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
txt="Artist: " + artist + "<br />Title: " + title + "<br />Year: "+ year;
document.getElementById("showCD").innerHTML=txt;
}

Try it »

Add navigation script

In order to add navigation (functionality) to the above example, two functions need to be created: next() and previous():

Example

 function next()
{ // display the next CD, unless you are on the last CD
if (i<x.length-1)
{
i++;
displayCD();
}
}

function previous()
{ // displays the previous CD, unless you are on the first CD
if (i>0)
{
i--;
displayCD();
}
}

Try it »

Show album information when clicking on CD

The final example shows how to display album information when the user clicks on a CD item:

Give it a try.

To learn more about using JavaScript and the XML DOM, visit our XML DOM tutorial.