[Javascript] Re: XMLHTTP send and receive stumper

[liorean]

On 09/11/05, Ryan Cannon <ryan at ryancannon.com> wrote:
> xmlhttp.responseXML.firstChild is not a document node (which we are
> used to working with), but a document type node. The differences were
> a little too subtle for me to wrap my head around quickly, but you
> can test this by doing

Isn't responseXML actually that reference to the Document node that
you thought responseXML.firstChild was?

> The correct way to access the document node (hence gaining access to
> (document object functions) is
>
> xmlhttp.responseXML.documentElement

No, that's not a reference to the Document node. That's a reference to
the root Element node of the document. The ownerDocument property of
the nodes in the document should point to the Document node.

> > Everything seemed to be going swimmingly, until I try to append the
> > result. body.innerHTML+=xmlhttp.responseText works fine, but
> > body.appendChild(xmlhttp.responseXML) causes the following error in
> > Firefox:
> >
> > Error: [Exception... "Node cannot be inserted at the specified
> > point in the hierarchy"  code: "3" nsresult: "0x80530003
> > (NS_ERROR_DOM_HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR)" ...]
> >
> > I obviously don't want to use innerHTML since everything I'm doing
> > is in XML, but I haven't been able to find a good way to debug this
> > error. Also, there's some other browser-compatibility errors, so if
> > anyone could point to a good tutorial on sending XML and processing
> > an XML response with javascript, I'd appreciate it.

Elements are created within a document realm. Elements can't be moved
between different documents arbitrarily, they need to be imported to
another document. At least, that's how it works in a more compliant
user agent. To import a node in these user agents you need to use the
importNode method of the Document node. As I recall iew doesn't
support importing nodes, but is not as strict on this front and allows
workarounds instead.
--
David "liorean" Andersson
<uri:http://liorean.web-graphics.com/>