Right at this very moment, I had a thought cross my mind. If I wanted to use Javascript to modify XML on the fly, how in the heck would I make that happen?
I think the answer is E4X, which is short for “ECMAscript for XML”. I tried to explain it in my own words several times, but I decided Wikipedia does it better:
“ECMAScript for XML (E4X) is a programming language extension that adds native XML support to ECMAScript (which includes ActionScript, DMDScript, JavaScript, JScript). It does this by providing access to the XML document in a form that mimics XML syntax. The goal is to provide an alternative to DOM interfaces that uses a simpler syntax for accessing XML documents. It also offers a new way of making XML visible. Before the release of E4X, XML was always accessed at an object level. E4X instead treats XML as a primitive (like characters, integers, and booleans). This implies faster access, better support, and acceptance as a building block (data structure) of a program.”
So, a powerful use, suggested here, would be building a form dynamically like this:
var html = <html/>;
html.head.title = “Hello, World.”;
html.body.form.@name = “hello”;
html.body.form.@action = “test.php”;
html.body.form.@method = “post”;
html.body.form.@onclick = “return foo();”;
html.body.form.input[0] = “”;
html.body.form.input[0].@name = “Submit”;
Pretty slick, I must admit. Anyways, I’m willing to bet we’ll be hearing more about this new technology soon as it gains traction in an area that needs some work.