[Solved] read cdata in xml from javascript

Question

Whilst we can’t say for sure without the XML that’s being parsed, the usual reason for ‘getting blanks’ from childNodes[0] (firstChild) is that there is a whitespace Text node between the parent’s start-tag and the node you are looking for:

<data>
    <![CDATA[ foo ]]>
</data>

On an XML parser that retains CDATA sections, that’ll give the data element three children: a Text node containing a newline and some spaces; the CDATASection node; and another Text node with a newline.

So you could take childNodes[1], but it’s a bit fragile… in particular it would break for an XML parser that turns CDATA sections into text, where you’d get a single Text child containing foo and all the whitespace. Probably better to take the textContent of the <data> element (except of course with fallback to innerText for IE).

Accepted Answer

Whilst we can’t say for sure without the XML that’s being parsed, the usual reason for ‘getting blanks’ from childNodes[0] (firstChild) is that there is a whitespace Text node between the parent’s start-tag and the node you are looking for:

<data>
    <![CDATA[ foo ]]>
</data>

On an XML parser that retains CDATA sections, that’ll give the data element three children: a Text node containing a newline and some spaces; the CDATASection node; and another Text node with a newline.

So you could take childNodes[1], but it’s a bit fragile… in particular it would break for an XML parser that turns CDATA sections into text, where you’d get a single Text child containing foo and all the whitespace. Probably better to take the textContent of the <data> element (except of course with fallback to innerText for IE).