Display XML results in HTML table

Question

I need to display the XML data from this URL: http://api.redfoundry.com/RFBase.ashx?type=get&name=b39d11d5-505f-453e-bcfc-9d3b19dd8a61&key=2469F6F56F61976FB51FDEC878E93555

into a HTML table that will automatically load when the HTML page is visited.

So far I have got the following but it doesn't seem to work, it's come from a W3 tutorial:

<html>
    <body>
        <script>
            if (window.XMLHttpRequest) { // code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari   
                xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
            }
            else {// code for IE6, IE5
                xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
            }
            xmlhttp.open("GET","http://api.redfoundry.com/RFBase.ashx?type=get&name=b39d11d5-505f-453e-bcfc-9d3b19dd8a61&key=2469F6F56F61976FB51FDEC878E93555",false);
            xmlhttp.send();
            xmlDoc = xmlhttp.responseXML; 
            document.write("<table border='1'>");
            var x = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("item");
            for (var i=0; i<x.length; i++) { 
                document.write("<tr><td>");
                document.write(x[i].getElementsByTagName("placename")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
                document.write("</td><td>");
                document.write(x[i].getElementsByTagName("description")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
                document.write("</td></tr>");
            }
            document.write("</table>");
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

The results that I want to show in the table are 'Item ID', placename, description, and address.

"it doesn't seem to work", please be more specific, does anything happen? do you get any console errors? — Smern, May 25 '13 at 14:20
Its simply nothing is shown in the HTML. Effectively the website is just blank. — googleyberry, May 25 '13 at 14:21

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 25 '13 at 14:40

1

Check the error console of your browser, it is probably telling that the access is denied. The same origin policy inside browsers usually prevents that an XMLHttpRequest can load data from a different origin than the one the document with the script is loaded from. So unless the server is set up to support CORS and you are using a browser supporting that too you can't load a document with XMLHttpRequest from the origin http://api.redfoundry.com.

answered May 25 '13 at 14:40

Martin Honnen

160,499
6
90
110

Okay, Thanks for noticing that. Do you know what I would need to do to get something like this to work without altering the server (It's 3rd party, I dont have control over it). – googleyberry May 25 '13 at 14:45
Try jsonp, see this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2558977/ajax-cross-domain-call – ronnyfm May 25 '13 at 15:03
You have the options outlined in the linked post (setting up a proxy on your server or using JSONP) – Martin Honnen May 25 '13 at 16:42

Display XML results in HTML table

1 Answers1