Create fast and dynamic web pages using AJAX

Learn Ajax to create interactive web application. This chapter will help you to learn Ajax technologies, action, security, examples, etc. You will also be able to learn Ajax examples with other technologies such as XML and PHP.

AJAX XMLFile


AJAX can be used for interactive communication with an XML file.


AJAX XML Example

The following example will demonstrate how a web page can fetch information from an XML file with AJAX:

See this example:




Example Explained

When a user clicks on the "Get CD info" button above, the loadDoc() function is executed.

The loadDoc() function creates an XMLHttpRequest object, adds the function to be executed when the server response is ready, and sends the request off to the server.

When the server response is ready, an HTML table is built, nodes (elements) are extracted from the XML file, and it finally updates the element "demo" with the HTML table filled with XML data:

LoadXMLDoc()

function loadDoc() {
  var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xhttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
    if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
    myFunction(this);
    }
  };
  xhttp.open("GET", "cd_catalog.xml", true);
  xhttp.send();
}
function myFunction(xml) {
  var i;
  var xmlDoc = xml.responseXML;
  var table="<tr><th>Artist</th><th>Title</th></tr>";
  var x = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("CD");
  for (i = 0; i <x.length; i++) {
    table += "<tr><td>" +
    x[i].getElementsByTagName("ARTIST")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue +
    "</td><td>" +
    x[i].getElementsByTagName("TITLE")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue +
    "</td></tr>";
  }
  document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = table;
}

The XML File

The XML file used in the example above looks like this: "cd_catalog.xml".