Exploring the capabilities of using XPath with a DOM document

I've been attempting to locate an xml node using an xpath query, but I'm having trouble getting it to work. When I try in Firefox, the result is always "undefined" and Chrome throws an error code.

<script type="text/javascript">

var xmlString = '<form><name>test</name></form>';
var doc = new DOMParser().parseFromString(xmlString,'text/xml');

var result = doc.evaluate('/form/name', doc, 
                          null, XPathResult.ANY_TYPE, null);

alert(result.stringValue);

</script>

Can anyone help me identify what's wrong with this code?

javascriptxmldomxpathdocument.evaluate

Answer №1

It's unclear why you encountered this error, but changing from XPathResult.ANY_TYPE to XPathResult.STRING_TYPE should resolve it (tested in firefox 3.6).

Consider the following:

var xmlString = '<form><name>test</name></form>';
var doc = new DOMParser().parseFromString(xmlString,'text/xml');
var result = doc.evaluate('/form/name', doc, null, XPathResult.STRING_TYPE, null);
alert(result.stringValue); // returns 'test'

View on jsfiddle.

EXPLANATION:

The 4th parameter of the evaluate method is an integer that specifies the desired result type (reference). There are different types, such as integer, string, and any type. The method returns an XPathResult, which has various properties.

You need to match the property (numberValue, stringValue) with the one used in evaluate.

It's puzzling why using any type didn't work with string value.

Answer №2

XPathResult.ANY_TYPE will yield a node set for the xpath expression /form/name, making it difficult to convert the node set to a string using result.stringValue. In such cases, you can utilize result.iterateNext().textContent

On the other hand, if the expression is something like count(/form/name), it will produce a numerical value when utilized with XPathResult.ANY_TYPE, allowing you to retrieve the number using result.numberValue.

For further in-depth explanation, visit https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/document.evaluate#Result_types

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