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SoftXMLLib - JavaScript XML Library

AJAX is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. AJAX is not a new programming language, but simply a new technique for creating better, faster, and more interactive web applications. AJAX uses JavaScript to send and receive data between a web browser and a web server. The AJAX technique makes web pages more responsive by exchanging data with the web server behind the scenes, instead of reloading an entire web page each time a user makes a change.

AJAX Is Based On Open Standards

AJAX is based on the following open standards:

* JavaScript * XML * HTML * CSS

The open standards used in AJAX are well defined, and supported by all major browsers. AJAX applications are browser and platform independent. (Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser technology)

You Can Start Using AJAX Today

There is nothing new to learn.

AJAX is based on open standards. These standards have been used by most developers for several years.

Most existing web applications can be rewritten to use AJAX technology instead of traditional HTML forms.

AJAX Uses XML And HTTP Requests

A traditional web application will submit input (using an HTML form) to a web server. After the web server has processed the data, it will return a completely new web page to the user.

Because the server returns a new web page each time the user submits input, traditional web applications often run slowly and tend to be less user friendly.

With AJAX, web applications can send and retrieve data without reloading the whole web page. This is done by sending HTTP requests to the server (behind the scenes), and by modifying only parts of the web page using JavaScript when the server returns data.

XML is commonly used as the format for receiving server data, although any format, including plain text, can be used.

SoftXMLLib is a cross-browser JavaScript Library. Any web developer dealing with XML data knows about hard job he must implement in order to make things working perfectly in all browsers.

At time I wrote this libriary, I thought that IE is only browser with true XPATH support but when I finished, my attitude to Mozilla browsers changed to good.

As a web developer, mostly client side scripting with advanced OOP JavaScript, I have been developing Ajax applications for IE. All was good until clients began to request cross-browser support. As any programmer, I am lazy, so I decided to write such cross-browser libriary in order to make my life easier and help other developers who are looking for ready solutions. You may ask me, why I did't use ready solutions like Sarrisa? Pehaps I wanted to make things even easier, making web developer spending less time on programming and more to have a pleassure outside job.

Currently SoftXMLLib libriary API includes 9 methods and 6 properties to operate on XML Document. Here I will give brief explanation on each:

Firstly include SoftXMLLib libriary into head section of your html file:

Create SoftXMLLib object: var SoftXMLLib = new SoftXMLLib();

Methods

Example - load SoftXMLLib.load("yourfile.xml") if(SoftXMLLib.loadError!=0){ alert("XML file is invalid!"); return; } Loads given XML file.

Example - loadXML var xmlString = "some text"; SoftXMLLib.loadXML(xmlString) if(SoftXMLLib.loadXMLError!=0){ alert("XML string is invalid!"); return; } Loads given XML string.

Example - selectNodes When there is no default namespace in XML document var xmlString = "some text"; SoftXMLLib.loadXML(xmlString) var xpath = "//company[@id='2']/@name"; matchedNodes = SoftXMLLib.selectNodes(xpath) Selects nodes in loaded XML document that matched XPATH expression In this example we select company's name where company id = 2 Only one node is returned by query, so we can access it like this: alert(matchedNodes[0].attributes[0].name); Will output Microsoft alert(matchedNodes[0].self.getAttribute("name")); Will output same as above Microsoft When accessing attribute you can use one of following options: attributes[0].attributename; or self.getAttribute("attributename")

When there is default namespace in XML document Important note: Currently Opera does not support default namespace, so this query won't work You have to set two properties in order to use xpath in Mozilla browsers SoftXMLLib.setPrefix("xsl"); SoftXMLLib.setNameSpace("http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"); var xmlString = "MicrosoftUSAOracleUSA"; SoftXMLLib.loadXML(xmlString) var xpath = "//xsl:company"; matchedNodes = SoftXMLLib.selectNodes(xpath) In this example we select all company nodes in loaded XML document for(var i = 0;i ' + SoftXMLLib.Encode("not english text") + '; SoftXMLLib.loadXML(xmlString) ajaxObj = SoftXMLLib.createAjaxObject(); ajaxObj.open("POST","http://www.yourserver.com/testAjax.asp",true); ajaxObj.onreadystatechange=function() { if (ajaxObj.readyState==4) { alert(ajaxObj.responseText); } } ajaxObj.send(softXMLLib.DOM); In order to send XML data with XMLHTTP object you have to use DOM property of SoftXMLLib object

Example - Decode This method returns string from ASC code passed to it Use this method with Ajax when you need to get content of xml tags in other then english language

Speciality: Internet Programmer (6 years of experience in scripting languages and VB ).

Education: 1992-1995: Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan.

Field of Specialization: Operating Systems: Windows NT, Windows XP/2000. Programming Languages: C#, VB, VBScript, JavaScript, TSQL, XML (DTD), XSL(XSLT,XPATH), DHTML, WML/Script, CSS Technologies: COM+, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, ASP3, ADO2.5, OLEDB, ODBC. Tools: MSSQL SERVER 7.0/2000, Apache



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