javascript: serialize as xml

By Anatoly Mironov

February 26, 2012

Why should we need to serialize javascript objects as XML. I don’t know. It is of course more a server side need. And there actually a need for javascript serialization as xml in node.js. To serialize as json is very simple: JSON.stringify(myobjects). I was just curious if there was a tool for xml serialization in javascript. There is a nice javascript tool called XMLWriter, developed by Ariel Flesler. Consider you have articles and want to serialize them as xml, let’s create a function for serializing:

function createProductXML(articles) {
  var v = new XMLWriter( 'UTF-8', '1.0' );
  v.indentChar = "  ";
  v.writeStartDocument();
  v.writeStartElement('articles');

  for(var a in articles) {
    var article = articles\[a\];
    v.writeStartElement('article');
    v.writeAttributeString('summercollection',article.summercollection.toString());
    v.writeAttributeString('wintercollection',article.wintercollection.toString());
    v.writeElementString('name', article.name);
    v.writeElementString('number', article.number);
    v.writeElementString('description', article.description);
    v.writeElementString('price', article.price.toString());
    v.writeElementString('quantity', article.quantity.toString());
    v.writeStartElement('categories');

    for(var c in article.categories) {
      v.writeElementString('category', article.categories\[c\]);
    }
    v.writeEndElement();
    v.writeEndElement();
  }

  v.writeEndDocument();
  return v.flush();
}
```And now we can test it: