Ajax Design Patterns

Chapter 11. DOM Population

WHAT DOES THE BROWSER DO ONCE IT RECEIVES A RESPONSE FROM THE SERVER? SEVERAL OPTIONS ARE covered in this chapter. XML Data Island explains how you can store an XML document within the web page’s DOM instead of converting it into a custom data structure. It also touches on some browser-specific features that let you tie the document’s value to the display. XML responses are also the primary concern of Browser-Side XSLT, explaining how an XML document can be converted to XHTML for inclusion on the page, or modified for uploading back to the server. Browser-Side Templating is not XML-specific; it brings to JavaScript the embedded scripting template concept popular in many server environments, such as JSPs and PHP scripts.

XML Data Island

⊙ Data, DOM, Storage, XBL, XML

Figure 11-1. XML Data Island

Developer Story

Dave’s demographics viewer stores each table of statistics as an XML document. A big cache of XML documents is held within the page, one for each table. The user can rearrange the tables and switch them between visible and hidden, but all the XML metadata remains on the page. To render the tables, Dave exploits the browser’s ability to translate XML into HTML tables.

Problem

How can you render incoming XML and retain the data?

Forces

• Many Ajax Apps receive XML Messages and must convert them into HTML.

• The incoming data often has to be retained as well.

Solution ...