How to use jQuery for XML parsing with namespaces

I'm new to jQuery and would like to parse an XML document.

I'm able to parse regular XML with the default namespaces but with XML such as:

<xml xmlns:s="uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882" xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema">
   <s:Schema id="RowsetSchema">
     <s:ElementType name="row" content="eltOnly" rs:CommandTimeout="30">
       <s:AttributeType name="ows_ID" rs:name="ID" rs:number="1">
        <s:datatype dt:type="i4" dt:maxLength="4" />
      </s:AttributeType>
       <s:AttributeType name="ows_DocIcon" rs:name="Type" rs:number="2">
        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />
      </s:AttributeType>
       <s:AttributeType name="ows_LinkTitle" rs:name="Title" rs:number="3">
        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />
      </s:AttributeType>
       <s:AttributeType name="ows_ServiceCategory" rs:name="Service Category" rs:number="4">
        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />
      </s:AttributeType>
    </s:ElementType>
  </s:Schema>
   <rs:data>
    <z:row ows_ID="2" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 1" />
    <z:row ows_ID="3" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 2" />
    <z:row ows_ID="4" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 3" />
  </rs:data>
</xml>

All I really want are the <z:row>.

So far, I've been using:

$.get(xmlPath, {}, function(xml) {
    $("rs:data", xml).find("z:row").each(function(i) {
        alert("found zrow");
    });
}, "xml");

with really no luck. Any ideas?

I got it.

Turns out that it requires \\ to escape the colon.

$.get(xmlPath, {}, function(xml) {
    $("rs\\:data", xml).find("z\\:row").each(function(i) {
        alert("found zrow");
    });
}, "xml");

As Rich pointed out:

The better solution does not require escaping and works on all "modern" browsers:

.find("[nodeName=z:row]")

I have spent several hours on this reading about plugins and all sorts of solutions with no luck.

ArnisAndy posted a link to a jQuery discussion, where this answer is offered and I can confirm that this works for me in Chrome(v18.0), FireFox(v11.0), IE(v9.08) and Safari (v5.1.5) using jQuery (v1.7.2).

I am trying to scrape a WordPress feed where content is named <content:encoded> and this is what worked for me:

content: $this.find("content\\:encoded, encoded").text()

If you are using jquery 1.5 you will have to add quotes around the node selector attribute value to make it work:

.find('[nodeName="z:row"]')

Although the above answer seems to be correct, it does not work in webkit browsers (Safari, Chrome). A better solution I believe would be:

.find("[nodeName=z:myRow, myRow]")    

In case someone needs to do this without jQuery, just with normal Javascript, and for Google Chrome (webkit), this is the only way I found to get it to work after a lot of research and testing.

> parentNode.getElementsByTagNameNS("*", "name");

That will work for retrieving the following node: <prefix:name>. As you can see the prefix or namespace is omitted, and it will match elements with different namespaces provided the tag name is name. But hopefully this won't be a problem for you.

None of this worked for me (I am developping a Google Chrome extension):

getElementsByTagNameNS("prefix", "name")

getElementsByTagName("prefix:name")

getElementsByTagName("prefix\\:name")

getElementsByTagName("name")

Edit: after some sleep, I found a working workaround :) This function returns the first node matching a full nodeName such as <prefix:name>:

// Helper function for nodes names that include a prefix and a colon, such as "<yt:rating>"
function getElementByNodeName(parentNode, nodeName)
{	
	var colonIndex = nodeName.indexOf(":");
	var tag = nodeName.substr(colonIndex + 1);
	var nodes = parentNode.getElementsByTagNameNS("*", tag);
	for (var i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++)
	{
		if (nodes[i].nodeName == nodeName) return nodes[i]
	}
	return undefined;
}

It can easily be modified in case you need to return all the matching elements. Hope it helps!

None of the solutions above work that well. I found this and has been improved for speed. just add this, worked like a charm:

$.fn.filterNode = function(name) {
    return this.find('*').filter(function() {
       return this.nodeName === name;
    });
};

usage:

var ineedthatelementwiththepsuedo = $('someparentelement').filterNode('dc:creator');

source: http://www.steveworkman.com/html5-2/javascript/2011/improving-javascript-xml-node-finding-performance-by-2000/

The "\\" escaping isn't foolproof and the simple

.find('[nodeName="z:row"]')

Method seems to have been broken as of Jquery 1.7. I was able to find a solution for 1.7 , using a filter function, here: Improving Javascript XML Node Finding Performance

It's worth noting that as of jQuery 1.7 there were issues with some of the work-arounds for finding namespaced elements. See these links for more information:

• jQuery Bug Ticket noting the lack of cross-browser support for the ability to do .find('[nodeName="z:row"]')
• A suggested plug-in workaround with some performance tests.

Found solution in the comment: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/128580/parsing-xml-with-namespaces-using-jquery-find?rq=1#comment11181500_128598

> Using the second half of node name after the colon worked for me. Used .find("lat") instead of .find("geo\:lat") and it worked for me.

---

My setup:

• Chrome 42
• jQuery 2.1.3

Sample XML (snippet from Google Contacts API):

<entry>
  <id>http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/mstefanow%40gmail.com/base/0</id>
  <gd:email rel="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#other" address="[email protected]" primary="true"/>
</entry>

Parsing code:

var xmlDoc = $.parseXML( xml );
var $xml = $( xmlDoc );
var $emailNode = $xml.find( "email" );
$("#email").html($emailNode.attr("address"));

Plnkr: http://plnkr.co/edit/l8VzyDq1NHtn5qC9zTjf?p=preview

jQuery 1.7 doesn't work with the following:

$(xml).find("[nodeName=a:IndexField2]")

One solution which I did get to work in Chrome, Firefox, and IE is to use selectors which work in IE AND selectors which work in Chrome, based on the fact that one way works in IE and the other in Chrome:

$(xml).find('a\\\\:IndexField2, IndexField2')

In IE, this returns nodes using the namespace (Firefox and IE require the namespace), and in Chrome, the selector returns nodes based on the non-namespace selector. I have not tested this in Safari, but it should work because it's working in Chrome.

My solution (because I use a Php proxy) is to replace : namespace by _ ... so no more namespace issues ;-)

Keep it simple !

Original Answer : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4825920/jquery-xml-parsing-how-to-get-element-attribute/15397052#15397052

Here is an example for how to successfully get the value in Chrome..

 item.description = jQuery(this).find("[nodeName=itunes\\:summary]").eq(0).text();

As of beginning of 2016, for me the following syntax works with jQuery 1.12.0:

• IE 11 (11.0.9600.18204, Update 11.0.28, KB3134815): .find("z\\:row")
• Firefox 44.0.2: .find("z\\:row")
• Chrome 44.0.2403.89m: .find("row")

The syntax .find("[nodeName=z:row]") doesn't work in any of the browsers mentioned above. I found no way to apply a namespace in Chrome.

Putting it all together, the following syntax works in all of the browsers mentioned above: .find("row,z\\:row")

As mentioned above, there are problems with the above solution with current browsers/versions of jQuery - the suggested plug-in doesn't completely work either because of case issues (nodeName, as a property, is sometimes in all upper case). So, I wrote the following quick function:

$.findNS = function (o, nodeName)
{
	return o.children().filter(function ()
	{
		if (this.nodeName)
			return this.nodeName.toUpperCase() == nodeName.toUpperCase();
		else
			return false;
	});
};

Example usage:

$.findNS($(xml), 'x:row');

content: $this.find("content\\:encoded, encoded").text()

is the perfect solution...

There is a plugin jquery-xmlns for jQuery to work with namespaces in selectors.

I have not seen any documentation on using JQuery to parse XML. JQuery typically uses the Browser dom to browse an HTML document, I don't believe it reads the html itself.

You should probably look at the built in XML handling in JavaScript itself.

http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/definitive2/

just replaced the namespace by empty string. Works fine for me. Tested solution across browsers: Firefox, IE, Chrome

My task was to read and parse an EXCEL-file via Sharepoint EXCEL REST API. The XML-response contains tags with "x:" namespace.

I decided to replace the namespace in the XML by an empty string. Works this way:

1. Get the node of interest out of the XML-response
2. Convert the selected node XML-Response (Document) to String
3. Replace namespace by empty string
4. Convert string back to XML-Document

See code outline here -->

function processXMLResponse)(xData)
{
  var xml = TOOLS.convertXMLToString("", "",$(xData).find("entry content")[0]);
  xml = xml.replace(/x:/g, "");            // replace all occurences of namespace
  xData =  TOOLS.createXMLDocument(xml);   // convert string back to XML
}

For XML-to-String conversion find a solution here: http://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?34553-Convert-DOM-XML-Document-to-string

Alternatively, you can use [fast-xml-parser][1] in your project, and convert the XML data into JS/JSON object. Then you can use it as object property. It doesn't use JQuery or other libraries but it'll solve your purpose.

var xmlData = '<xml xmlns:s="uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882" xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema">'
+'   <s:Schema id="RowsetSchema">'
+'     <s:ElementType name="row" content="eltOnly" rs:CommandTimeout="30">'
+'       <s:AttributeType name="ows_ID" rs:name="ID" rs:number="1">'
+'        <s:datatype dt:type="i4" dt:maxLength="4" />'
+'      </s:AttributeType>'
+'       <s:AttributeType name="ows_DocIcon" rs:name="Type" rs:number="2">'
+'        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />'
+'      </s:AttributeType>'
+'       <s:AttributeType name="ows_LinkTitle" rs:name="Title" rs:number="3">'
+'        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />'
+'      </s:AttributeType>'
+'       <s:AttributeType name="ows_ServiceCategory" rs:name="Service Category" rs:number="4">'
+'        <s:datatype dt:type="string" dt:maxLength="512" />'
+'      </s:AttributeType>'
+'    </s:ElementType>'
+'  </s:Schema>'
+'   <rs:data>'
+'    <z:row ows_ID="2" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 1" />'
+'    <z:row ows_ID="3" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 2" />'
+'    <z:row ows_ID="4" ows_LinkTitle="Sample Data 3" />'
+'  </rs:data>'
+'</xml>'

var jsObj = parser.parse(xmlData,{attrPrefix:"",ignoreTextNodeAttr: false});
document.write(JSON.stringify(jsObj.xml["rs:data"]["z:row"][0],null,4) + "<br>");
document.write(JSON.stringify(jsObj.xml["rs:data"]["z:row"][1],null,4) + "<br>");
document.write(JSON.stringify(jsObj.xml["rs:data"]["z:row"][2],null,4) + "<br>");

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/fast-xml-parser/2.9.2/parser.min.js"></script>

You can ignore namespaces while parsing to js/json object. In this case you can directly access as jsObj.xml.data.row.

for(var i=0; i< jsObj.xml.data.row.length; i++){
  console.log(jsObj.xml.data.row[i]);
}

Disclaimer: I've created fast-xml-parser. [1]: https://cdnjs.com/libraries/fast-xml-parser

For Webkit browsers, you can just leave off the colon. So to find <media:content> in an RSS feed for example, you can do this:

$(this).find("content");