XML - Processing with DOM & SAX

This lecture begins with a close look at the popular document object model (DOM) as an application programming interface (API) for XML. Clent side processing with DOM includes a quick look at AJAX with and without the XMLHttpRequest object. The simple API for XML (SAX) takes a rather different approach to XML programming and provides an interesting comparison.

Lecture Slides

XML - Processing with DOM and SAX PowerPoint

Examples from the lecture

Example 1

Server-side PHP DOM - simple temperature list

using the PHP to read the XML file into a string and use DOM->loadXML()
- listTempsSimple.php
- source code for listTempsSimple.php
- temperatures.xml
using the PHP to read the XML file using DOM->load()
- listFlatTemps.php
- source code for listFlatTemps.php
- requires a flattened XML fileflatTemps.xml
  - compare view source with temperatures.xml
- listNotFlatTemps.php see what happens if the xml is not flattened for DOM->load()
- source code for listNotFlatTemps.php
- listNotFlatTempsNOBLANKS.php using LIBXML_NOBLANKS with DOM->load()
- source code for listNotFlatTempsNOBLANKS.php

Example 2

Server-side PHP DOM - paged temperature list with validating parser

Example 3

Client-side JavaScript DOM- listing temperatures

listTempsStrict.html the strict XHTML version
listTemps.html the XML data island version - IE5+ only

Example 4

Client-side JavaScript DOM - searching temperatures

searchTempsStrict.html the strict XHTML version
searchTemps.html the XML data island version - IE5+ only

Example 5

Three variations on AJAX (view source to see the code)

ajax.html AJAX loading XML into the page
- ajaxTestAsynchronous.html just to confirm that this is asynchonous
XMLHttpRequest.html using XMLHttpRequest AJAX to load XML into the page
- XMLHttpRequestTestAsynchronous.html just to confirm that this is asynchonous
ajaxDirectory.html using XMLHttpRequest to create an AJAX application without using XML
Don't forget the example we played with when looking at JavaScript validation

Example 6

SAX Menu using PHP

saxMenu.php SAX menu
source code for saxMenu.php
menu.xml
saxMenuFlat.php SAX menu using a flat XML file - view source to see the difference
menuFlat.xml

Tutorial exercises

Remember that these exercises are an important part of the course and relvant to your coursework.

tutorial exercises

Some DOM and SAX resources

W3C DOM
- Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Specification
Mozilla DOM Reference
SAX homepage
XML for <SCRIPT>
DOM, SAX and JDOM tutorial from Anders Møller & Michael I. Schwartzbach
Microsoft's extensive DOM documentation
Jesse James Garrett's AJAX article
SAJAX - Simple AJAX toolkit
XMLHttpRequest - from Wikipedia