Simon Willison’s Weblog

Javascript XML parser

I’ve added Dave Lindquist’s Javascript XML parser to my blog entry form using the code he posted in the discussion on webgraphics. It works an absolute treat—it even pops up an alert message telling me what is wrong with the post (usually ’End tag does not match opening tag’) and won’t let me submit the form until I have fixed the error. The actual XML parsing library is a truly impressive piece of work, despite the lack of documentation. Dave suggests that it is pretty much obsolete now that most modern browsers have a built in XML parser accessible through scripting, but his parser is easily fast enough for my purposes.