Trying to use the DOMParser with node js

Question

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

Nino Filiu · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-29T14:53:25.667

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.

score 26 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 08 '19 at 16:48

26

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

answered Jan 08 '19 at 16:48

jrz

4,286
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21

Great approach! Especially because in my case a 3rd-party library was using DOMParser. – Gustavo Straube Dec 14 '22 at 16:20

score 21 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 27 '15 at 08:42

21

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');

answered Dec 27 '15 at 08:42

Chris Alley

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4

it does not work - just spits a lot of error "entity not found" when trying to parse an html page – DataGreed Feb 25 '16 at 20:03
4

xmldom is an old library. No querySelector support – Fuji Aug 16 '16 at 10:14
2

`xmldom` is a poor substitute for DOMParser. It does not correctly parse peer elements. – P.Brian.Mackey Sep 12 '17 at 20:22
It satisfies my needs as I am actually implementing this logic! Thanks, https://gist.github.com/chinchang/8106a82c56ad007e27b1 – Ravikumar Rajendran Jun 04 '21 at 12:57
This is the replacement for the older xmldom package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@xmldom/xmldom – hallvors Oct 18 '22 at 21:09

score 17 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 09 '12 at 15:47

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

answered Jul 09 '12 at 15:47

Esailija

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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
1

The link provided appears to have expired. – vhs May 20 '22 at 11:24

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 14 '18 at 17:25

5

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

answered Feb 14 '18 at 17:25

Johannes Fahrenkrug

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it's good to know that additional packages that make it actually useful (css-select, domutils) are not free – okram Jul 17 '23 at 08:30

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 07 '15 at 12:02

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');

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 27 '21 at 23:26

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)

answered Apr 27 '21 at 23:26

Roman

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Sep 22 '21 at 21:42

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 })
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Apr 04 '23 at 21:28

I needed DOMParser in node. This is what I used

const jsdom = require('jsdom');
const {JSDOM} = jsdom;

class DOMParser {
  parseFromString(s, contentType = 'text/html') {
    return new JSDOM(s, {contentType}).window.document;
  }
}

now the example from this answer works for me.

function htmlDecode(input) {
  var doc = new DOMParser().parseFromString(input, "text/html");
  return doc.documentElement.textContent;
}

console.log(  htmlDecode("&lt;img src='myimage.jpg'&gt;")  )    
// "<img src='myimage.jpg'>"

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Jul 29 '23 at 20:13

you can as well use html-to-text in case you need html to text conversion as can be seen in few answers to this question.

const { convert } = require('html-to-text');
// There is also an alias to `convert` called `htmlToText`.

const options = {
  wordwrap: 130,
  // ...
};
const html = '<div>Hello World</div>';
const text = convert(html, options);
console.log(text); // Hello World

Trying to use the DOMParser with node js

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