javascript

Other Node Types
Chapter 16: ECMA Script for XML
E4X is capable of representing all parts of an XML document, including comments and processing
instructions. By default, E4X will not parse comments or processing instructions, so they won ’ t show up
in the object hierarchy. To force the parser to recognize them, the following two properties on the XML
constructor must be set:
XML.ignoreComments = false;
XML.ignoreProcessingInstructions = false;
With these flags set, E4X parses comments and processing instructions into the XML structure.
Since the XML type represents all of the node types, it ’ s necessary to have a way to tell them apart. The
nodeKind() method indicates what type of node an XML object represents, and returns “ text ” ,
“ element ” , “ comment ” , “ processing - instruction ” , or “ attribute ” . Consider the following XML
object:
var employees = < employees >
< ?Dont forget the donuts? >
< employee position=”Software Engineer” >
< name > Nicholas C. Zakas < /name >
< /employee >
< !-- just added -- >
< employee position=”Salesperson” >
< name > Jim Smith < /name >
< /employee >
< /employees > ;
Given this XML, the following table shows what nodeKind() returns, depending on which node is in scope.
Statement
Returns
employees.nodeKind() “ element ”
employees.*[0].nodeKind() “ processing - instruction ”
employees.employee[0].@position.nodeKind() “ attribute ”
employees.employee[0].nodeKind() “ element ”
employees.*[2].nodeKind() “ comment ”
employees.employee[0].name.*[0].nodeKind() “ text ”
The nodeKind() method can ’ t be called on an XMLList that has more than one XML object in it; doing so
throws an error.
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