E4X assignment gotcha
Obscure TIP Warning
E4X allows direct embedding of XML literals inside JavaScript which make it very easy to work with XML inside JavaScript. Recently while working on a Firefox extension I got bit by some unexpected behavior of an XML variable assignment operator (=). Basically it clones the XML document fragment on the right hand side of assignment operator. The following program demonstrates the behavior.
<html>
<head>
<title>E4X</title>
<script>
function e4x() {
var languages = <languages></languages>;
alert("initial value of variable 'languages'=:\n" + languages.toXMLString());
var javascript = <scripting>JavaScript</scripting>
alert("initial value of variable 'javascript':\n" + javascript.toXMLString());
languages.scripting = javascript;
alert("after adding 'javascript' variable as a child node - value of variable 'languages':\n" + languages.toXMLString());
javascript.version = <version>1.2</version>
alert("after adding version node - value of variable 'javascript':\n" + javascript.toXMLString());
alert("after adding version node to variable 'javascript' - value of variable 'languages':\n" +
languages.toXMLString() +
"\nvalue of variable 'languages' does not reflect the changes made to the value of variable 'javascript'.");
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="e4x();">
</body>
</html>
You can try this program (if you are using Firefox) by clicking here.
Posted by sandipchitale
( May 11 2008, 07:25:00 PM PDT ) Permalink
Sunday May 11, 2008 
Sandip Chitale's blog (scblog)
