Alex @ Net

During my work on XML Serializer I ran into the problem with differences with XML support in browsers. Hopefully, this problem now is much clearer than in early days and you do not need a special library, like Sarissa, to work with XML nodes in modern browsers. Things are clear and nice now, because the standard DOM is implemented in latest Mozilla/Firefox, Opera and Safari.

However, there are still a few minor changes with loading and serializing XML documents and
I have summarized them in the following adapter:

function getDomAdapter()
{
	var adapter = '';
	if ('undefined' != typeof ActiveXObject) {
		adapter = 'MS';
	} else if ('undefined' != typeof document
		&& document.implementation
		&& document.implementation.createDocument
		&& 'undefined' != typeof DOMParser)
	{
		adapter = 'default';
	}
	switch (adapter) {
		case 'MS':
			return new (function () {
				this.createDocument = function () {
					var names = ["Msxml2.DOMDocument.6.0",
						"Msxml2.DOMDocument.3.0", "MSXML2.DOMDocument",
						"MSXML.DOMDocument", "Microsoft.XMLDOM"];
					for (var key in names) {
						try {
							return new ActiveXObject(names[key]);
						} catch (e) {}
					}
					throw new Error('Unable to create DOMDocument');
				};
				this.serialize = function (doc) {
					return doc.xml;
				};
				this.parseXml = function (xml) {
					var doc = this.createDocument();
					if (!doc.loadXML(xml)) {
						throw new Error('Parse error');
					}
					return doc;
				};
			})();
		case 'default':
			return new (function () {
				this.createDocument = function () {
					return document.implementation.createDocument("", "", null);
				};
				this.serialize = function (doc) {
					return new XMLSerializer().serializeToString(doc);
				};
				this.parseXml = function (xml) {
					var doc = new DOMParser().parseFromString(xml, "text/xml");
					if ("parsererror" == doc.documentElement.nodeName) {
						throw new Error('Parse error');
					}
					return doc;
				};
			})();
		default:
			throw new Error('Unable to select the DOM adapter');
	}
};

The function above creates adapter that is suitable for current browser and
contains the following methods:

createDocument()

creates blank XML DOM Document.

serialize(DOMDocument)

dumps XML DOM Document to a string.

parseXml(string)

parses XML string and returns XML DOM Document, throws expcetion if parsing fails.

This is an example on use of the adapter:

var xml = "";
var doc = getDomAdapter().parseXml(xml);
doc.documentElement.appendChild(doc.createElement('passed'));
alert(getDomAdapter().serialize(doc));

This code successfuly displays "<test><passed /></test>" in the following browsers:

• Mozilla Firefox 2
• Internet Explorer 7
• Opera 9
• Safari 3 (Win)