How to create a DOM tree
This page describes how to use the DOM API in JavaScript to create XML documents.
Consider the following XML document:
xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<people>
<person first-name="eric" middle-initial="H" last-name="jung">
<address street="321 south st" city="denver" state="co" country="usa"/>
<address street="123 main st" city="arlington" state="ma" country="usa"/>
</person>
<person first-name="jed" last-name="brown">
<address street="321 north st" city="atlanta" state="ga" country="usa"/>
<address street="123 west st" city="seattle" state="wa" country="usa"/>
<address street="321 south avenue" city="denver" state="co" country="usa"/>
</person>
</people>
You can use the DOM API to create an in-memory representation of this document:
js
const doc = document.implementation.createDocument("", "", null);
const peopleElem = doc.createElement("people");
const personElem1 = doc.createElement("person");
personElem1.setAttribute("first-name", "eric");
personElem1.setAttribute("middle-initial", "h");
personElem1.setAttribute("last-name", "jung");
const addressElem1 = doc.createElement("address");
addressElem1.setAttribute("street", "321 south st");
addressElem1.setAttribute("city", "denver");
addressElem1.setAttribute("state", "co");
addressElem1.setAttribute("country", "usa");
personElem1.appendChild(addressElem1);
const addressElem2 = doc.createElement("address");
addressElem2.setAttribute("street", "123 main st");
addressElem2.setAttribute("city", "arlington");
addressElem2.setAttribute("state", "ma");
addressElem2.setAttribute("country", "usa");
personElem1.appendChild(addressElem2);
const personElem2 = doc.createElement("person");
personElem2.setAttribute("first-name", "jed");
personElem2.setAttribute("last-name", "brown");
const addressElem3 = doc.createElement("address");
addressElem3.setAttribute("street", "321 north st");
addressElem3.setAttribute("city", "atlanta");
addressElem3.setAttribute("state", "ga");
addressElem3.setAttribute("country", "usa");
personElem2.appendChild(addressElem3);
const addressElem4 = doc.createElement("address");
addressElem4.setAttribute("street", "123 west st");
addressElem4.setAttribute("city", "seattle");
addressElem4.setAttribute("state", "wa");
addressElem4.setAttribute("country", "usa");
personElem2.appendChild(addressElem4);
const addressElem5 = doc.createElement("address");
addressElem5.setAttribute("street", "321 south avenue");
addressElem5.setAttribute("city", "denver");
addressElem5.setAttribute("state", "co");
addressElem5.setAttribute("country", "usa");
personElem2.appendChild(addressElem5);
peopleElem.appendChild(personElem1);
peopleElem.appendChild(personElem2);
doc.appendChild(peopleElem);
DOM trees can be:
- queried using XPath expressions
- converted to strings using XMLSerializer
- posted to a web server using
XMLHttpRequest
- transformed using XSLT or XLink.