MSXML and the DOCTYPE

**doodab** · 11 August 2010, 12:48

There is a doctype property, but it's read only.

Have you tried appending the root element in the string used when you create the thing in loadXML. This might be required so you have a "well formed" document.

i.e.

loadXml("<!DOCTYPE blah blah blah> <html></html>")

**VectraMan** · 11 August 2010, 13:28

Yes I tried that, and it fails the loadXML there too.

**doodab** · 11 August 2010, 13:39

you could try setting validateOnParse to false, just in case it's deciding that empty HTML doc isn't valid as per the DTD?

I suspect there is also a property to disable resolving external references i.e. the one in the DTD, not sure what it's called but you might need to make that false as well.

**VectraMan** · 11 August 2010, 16:07

Huzzah!

put_validateOnParse didn't work, but put_resolveExternals did. Thanks.

Do you know if it can be made to format the output xml nicely? For testing purposes it'd be a lot easier if it didn't write everything out as one long line. I'm sure I've done that before, but I may be thinking about C#/.NET.

**dang65** · 11 August 2010, 16:17

For HTML5 the DOCTYPE declaration is:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>

Happy days.

**NickFitz** · 11 August 2010, 19:53

Originally posted by VectraMan View Post

Huzzah!

put_validateOnParse didn't work, but put_resolveExternals did. Thanks.

Do you know if it can be made to format the output xml nicely? For testing purposes it'd be a lot easier if it didn't write everything out as one long line. I'm sure I've done that before, but I may be thinking about C#/.NET.

If the DOM has been created from input that doesn't have newlines, it won't insert them. If you're creating the DOM by parsing a string, you'll have to insert newlines into the string. If you're doing it properly with createElement and so forth, you'll have to explicitly add the whitespace nodes with createTextNode.

An easier approach is to use XSLT with an identity transform, and use <xsl

utput/>; you can also get it to generate the document type declaration for you:

Code:

<xsl:stylesheet  
  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" 
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  version="1.0">
	
    <xsl:output 
      method="xml"
      encoding="UTF-8"
      omit-xml-declaration="yes"
      indent="yes"
      doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
      doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"/>


    <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
        <xsl:copy>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="@*"/>
            <xsl:apply-templates/>
        </xsl:copy>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

MSXML and the DOCTYPE