111

I am running into issues when trying to use the DOMParser in my js code. In my code, I retrieve an xml file via xmlhttp.responseText soap response. I want to be able to access its elements in JSON format, so my code looks like:

var xml = new DOMParser();
xml = xml.parseFromString(xmlhttp.responseText, 'text/xml');
var result = xmlToJson(xml);

I get this error message: ReferenceError: DOMParser is not defined

Edit: This link hasn't worked for me because my javascript isn't in the HTML page, as it is a node.js file. JavaScript DOMParser access innerHTML and other properties

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Stephen D
  • 2,188
  • 3
  • 23
  • 38

8 Answers8

123

A lot of browser functionalities, like DOM manipulations or XHR, are not available natively NodeJS because that is not a typical server task to access the DOM - you'll have to use an external library to do that.

DOM capacities depends a lot on the library, here's a quick comparisons of the main tools you can use:

  • jsdom: implements DOM level 4 which is the latest DOM standard, so everything that you can do on a modern browser, you can do it in jsdom. It is the de-facto industry standard for doing browser stuff on Node, used by Mocha, Vue Test Utils, Webpack Prerender SPA Plugin, and many other:

    const jsdom = require("jsdom");
const dom = new jsdom.JSDOM(`<!DOCTYPE html><p>Hello world</p>`);
dom.window.document.querySelector("p").textContent; // 'Hello world'

  • deno_dom: if using Deno instead of Node is an option, this library provides DOM parsing capabilities:

    import { DOMParser } from "https://deno.land/x/deno_dom/deno-dom-wasm.ts";
const parser = new DOMParser();
const document = parser.parseFromString('<p>Hello world</p>', 'text/html');
document.querySelector('p').textContent; // 'Hello world';

  • htmlparser2: same as jsdom, but with enhanced performances and flexibility at the price of a more complex API:

    const htmlparser = require("htmlparser2");
const parser = new htmlparser.Parser({
  onopentag: (name, attrib) => {
    if (name=='p') console.log('a paragraph element is opening');
  }
}, {decodeEntities: true});
parser.write(`<!DOCTYPE html><p>Hello world</p>`);
parser.end();
// console output: 'a paragraph element is opening'

  • cheerio: implementation of jQuery based on HTML DOM parsing by htmlparser2:

    const cheerio = require('cheerio');
const $ = cheerio.load(`<!DOCTYPE html><p>Hello world</p>`);
$('p').text('Bye moon');
$.html(); // '<!DOCTYPE html><p>Bye moon</p>'

  • xmldom: fully implements the DOM level 2 and partially implements the DOM level 3. Works with HTML, and with XML also

  • dom-parser: regex-based DOM parser that implements a few DOM methods like getElementById. Since parsing HTML with regular expressions is a very bad idea I wouldn't recommend this one for production.

Nino Filiu
  • 12,893
  • 9
  • 48
  • 65
17

There is no DOMParser in node.js, that's a browser thing. You can try any of these modules though:

https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/modules#wiki-parsers-xml

Esailija
  • 134,577
  • 23
  • 263
  • 318
  • 1
    I know this thread is old, but here it goes. What about jquery for node? An ajax call with dataType xml should receive an xml dom response. – ffflabs Jul 24 '14 at 02:45
  • The link provided appears to have expired. – vhs May 20 '22 at 11:24
17

You can use a Node implementation of DOMParser, such as xmldom. This will allow you to access DOMParser outside of the browser. For example:

var DOMParser = require('xmldom').DOMParser;
var parser = new DOMParser();
var document = parser.parseFromString('Your XML String', 'text/xml');
Chris Alley
  • 2,945
  • 2
  • 20
  • 30
15

I used jsdom because it's got a ton of usage and is written by a prominent web hero - no promises that it's behavior perfectly matches your browser (or even that every browser's behavior is the same) but it worked for me:

const jsdom = require("jsdom")
const { JSDOM } = jsdom
global.DOMParser = new JSDOM().window.DOMParser
Jon z
  • 3,744
  • 1
  • 27
  • 20
4

I really like htmlparser2. It's a fantastic, fast and lightweight library. I've created a small demo on how to use it on RunKit: https://runkit.com/jfahrenkrug/htmlparser2-demo/1.0.0

Johannes Fahrenkrug
  • 40,544
  • 18
  • 119
  • 159
2
var DOMParser = require('xmldom').DOMParser;
var doc = new DOMParser().parseFromString(
    '<xml xmlns="a" xmlns:c="./lite">\n'+
        '\t<child>test</child>\n'+
        '\t<child></child>\n'+
        '\t<child/>\n'+
    '</xml>'
    ,'text/xml');
Anjali
  • 57
  • 1
0

I use yet another DOM parser from html string to DOM and back > Himalaya, or at npmjs.com:

import { parse, stringify } from 'himalaya';

const dom = parse(htmlString)

// Do something here

const htmlStringNext = stringify(dom)
Roman
  • 15,278
  • 11
  • 75
  • 80
0

RSS parser is easy for parsing Atom feeds. I you are using NextJs for example you can simply create an API like so:

import Parser from 'rss-parser'

export default async function API(req, res) {
    let parser = new Parser();
    try {
        const feed = await parser.parseURL(`https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/lg_image_of_the_day.rss`);
        if (feed) return res.json({ "message": `Here is your data feed title`, status: 200, data: feed.title })
    } catch (error) {
        return res.json({ "message": "You made an invalid request", status: 401 })
    }
}
w. Patrick Gale
  • 686
  • 6
  • 19