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XMLList Class

Four methods are used to deal with the names of XML nodes:

name()

— Returns the qualified name of the node, which is a

QName

object

localName()

— Returns the local name of the node, which is equivalent to

name().localName

setName(

qname

)

— Sets the qualified name of the node

setLocalName(

localname

)

— Sets the local name of the node

Example:

var oXml = <message>Hello World!</message>

oXml.setLocalName(“msg”); //changes the code to <msg>Hello World!</msg>

oXml.setName(new QName(“mess”)); //chnages the code to <mess>Hello World!</mess>

Here, the XML code is changed twice, changing

<msg/>

and then

<msg/>

<mess/>

The last method is

text()

, which returns the text (simple content) of an element:

var oXml = <name>Nicholas C. Zakas</name>;

var sName = oXml.text(); //returns “Nicholas C. Zakas”;

The XMLList Class

The

XMLList

class, briefly introduced in the previous section, represents an array of

XML

objects. Just as

with the XML object, you have a number of ways to create an

XMLList

object.

First, you can use the constructor and pass in an XML string containing a number of elements that aren’t

enclosed by a root element. For example:

var oXmlList = new XMLList(“<name>Nicholas C. Zakas</name><name>Michael

Smith</name>”);

In this example, a string of two

<name/>

elements is passed into the

XMLList

, which creates two sepa-

rate

XML

objects and stores them. Alternately, you can use the plus sign with existing

XML

objects to

create an

XMLList

var oXml1 = <name>Nicholas C. Zakas</name>;

var oXml2 = <name>Michael Smith</name>;

var oXmlList = oXml1 + oXml2;

These three lines perform the exact same function as the single line shown previously, creating two

XML

objects and storing them in a new

XMLList

object. But you also have one more way to create an

XMLList

var oXmlList = <><name>Nicholas C. Zakas</name><name>Michael Smith</name></>;

This form is the XML literal for an

XMLList

object. The important syntax is the empty opening and clos-

ing tags, indicating this isn’t a typical

XML

object (empty tags are illegal in XML).

As mentioned in the previous section, the

XML

and

XMLList

objects are purposely similar to blur the dis-

tinction between the two. As such,

XMLList

objects have all the same methods as

XML

objects, although

they behave a bit differently.

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