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XSLT Support in Browsers

If you feel like living dangerously, you can use the

XPathResult.ANY_TYPE

. By specifying this result

type,

evaluate()

returns the most appropriate result type based on the XPath expression. Typically,

this result type is a Boolean value, number value, string value, or an unordered node iterator. To deter-

mine which result type has been returned use the

resultType

property:

var oEvaluator = new XPathEvaluator();

var oResult = oEvaluator.evaluate(“employee/name”, oXmlDom.documentElement, null,

XPathResult.STRING_TYPE, null);

if (oResult != null) {

switch(oResult.resultType) {

case XPath.STRING_TYPE:

//handle string type

break;

case XPath.NUMBER_TYPE:

//handle number type

break;

case XPath.BOOLEAN_TYPE:

//handle boolean type

break;

case XPath.UNORDERED_NODE_ITERATOR_TYPE:

//handle unordered node iterator type

break;

default:

//handle other possible result types

}

As you can tell, XPath evaluation in Mozilla is much more complicated than IE, but also much more

powerful. By using the custom

selectNodes()

and

selectSingleNode()

methods, you can perform

XPath evaluation in both browsers using the same code.

XSLT Support in Browsers

A sibling language to XML, eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) allows the manipula-

tion and transformation of XML code into almost any other text-based form. Presently, many developers

use XSLT to transform XML into HTML, but this is just one use (see Figure 15-1).

Figure 15-1

XML

XSLT

HTML

Text

Other XML

Formats

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XML in JavaScript

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