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resulting XML

var oXml = <employees>

<name>Nicholas C. Zakas</name>

</employee>

<name>Jim Smith</name>

</employee>

</employees>;

var oFirstEmployee = oXml.child(0);

var oFirstEmployeeToo = oXml.child(“employee”);

var oAllEmployees = oXml.children();

var iFirstEmployeeIndex = oFirstEmployee.childIndex(); //0

This code shows two ways of obtaining the first employee in the XML code. First, the

child()

method

is used with the position

, the location of the first element. Then, the

child()

method is used with the

tag name of the element. Each of these calls returns a reference to the same employee element. To get all

employees, the

children()

method is called. Finally, the first employee’s

childIndex()

method is

called, which returns

The methods discussed previously return all types of child nodes for the given element. However, if you

want to return only child nodes of a specific type or nodes that relate to the element in different ways,

several methods are available:

comments()

— Returns only comment child nodes

elements()

— Returns only element child nodes

processingInstructions()

— Returns only processing instruction child nodes

descendants()

— Returns all nodes that descend from the given element

parent()

— Returns the parent node of the element

A variety of methods are available to alter child nodes:

appendChild(

child

)

— Adds a new child to the end of the children

prependChild(

child

)

— Adds a new child to the beginning of the children

insertChildBefore(

child

refchild

)

— Inserts a child before a given reference node

insertChildAfter(

child

refchild

)

— Inserts a child after a given reference node

replace(

childname

newchild

)

— Replaces the child with the given name (or position)

with a new child

setChildren(

list

)

— Replaces all children with children contained in a given

XMLList

These methods are incredibly useful and easy to use:

var oXml = <employees>

<name>Nicholas C. Zakas</name>

</employee>

<name>Jim Smith</name>

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