Xml to HTML5 with javascript - javascript

I thought this was a quite common question, but for some reason I can't find the answer anywhere.
I want to read out xml data and put it in my html5 app. The xml file is hosted on a different server. So I've allready got an HTML5 site with layout, I've got the location of my xml file, how do I implement specific data in to my html?

In most browsers, you can't for security reasons. In some newer browsers you can use Cross-Origin Resource Sharing providing the data provider cooperates.
Otherwise you need to make the data available on the same server as the application, or have the data provided in JSON-P format.

For security reasons, you cannot use Javascript to read content from a different domain.
You need to write a server-side script on your domain to forward the XML.
You can then use normal AJAX to create the page.

Related

Cross Domain HTML Get Request

Im using Coda, and Im trying to write a program to use Javascript/Jquery to load nfl's html on their stats page (http://www.nfl.com/stats/player), and then remove all of the excess html. Resulting several lists of players and their stat's.
I've tried using `$('#container').load('http://www.nfl.com/stats/player').
This works fine in Coda, but I can't parse the html the way I want to.
In google chrome I get the error
XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://www.nfl.com/stats/player. Origin null is not
allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
From what I understand this is a security feature built into all browsers. Is there a workaround to this issue? Can I use a different type of request?
I understand that i should be using JSONP for this type of request, but I dont believe the nfl has an API that would make this possible.
I've seen questions like this get thrown around, but I don't think anyone's given a really good solid answer yet.
I think theres still a lot of people wondering if theres an easy way to $.get cross-domain HTML and parse it.
You're not allowed to do this because it can be used for XSS (cross site scripting) where scripts are accessed by scripts outside of the domain of the site. i.e. you can get cookie information or such this way.
You will have to do this server side. If you're using php you can use $content = file_get_contents('http://nfl.com/stats/player'); or you can do it using curl if you wish.
Otherwise the legit way to do it is through an API, but as you've pointed out that isn't an option in your case.

POST data to JavaScript include

You know the standard JavaScript include in HTML?
<script src="http://example.com/script.js"></script>
How can I post data to that src? Using AJAX or jQuery is probably not an option, unless you can get it to work cross-domain.
You can't post data and retrieve the content cross domain. It's a security issue.
You probably already realize this, but you can do GET requests by appending it to the url:
<script src="http://example.com/script.js?key=value&key2=value"></script>
You could also use a proxy to retrieve cross domain requests from a site. This project looks promising: https://github.com/jamespadolsey/jQuery-Plugins/tree/master/cross-domain-ajax/
But it appears to also only support GET requests through yahoo's server.
The only viable option is create a php(other other sever languages) proxy that you could filter through. It wouldn't be to difficult using php's curl API. There are equivalents in other server scripting languages.

How can we use JavaScript for cross-domain getting of a web page Without the use of XMLHttpRequest? Is there a plug-in that could do this?

using JavaScript, it is much needed to get some pages from the web using without actually moving from the current page and hidden from the user's eyes.
To request a web page without showing it to the user, it is easy to use XMLHttpRequest but it has its own limitations most importantly it does not retrieve cross-domain pages very well. For security reasons the browsers (Mozilla FireFox 3.6+ in my case) retrieve a header from the target site and if the referrer's location is allowed access in that header, only then will the browser continue getting the target web page and JavaScript can only then parse the retrieved info.
This causes the XMLHttpRequest to work with some pages and not work with others if you are trying to access cross-domain pages. Of course it works well if you need to retrieve the information from the same location as the referrer page where the XMLHttpRequest is located.
This is a big problem, when security is not really no 1 priority. For example, imagine writing a script for retrieving live data from a statistics-producing web site or imagine a bot that needs to retrieve data from an online gaming web-site.
Now, how can JavaScript be used to get pages from other domains (cross-domain reference)?
I thought maybe we could find a plug-in that does the job (of course after installation upon user's permission) and then use its properties by JS and eliminate the need for XMLHttpRequest. Do you know any such plug-in or another roundabout for this problem? (ie get cross-domain data by JS without XMLHttpRequest) of course we cannot use XMLHttpRequest as we don't have any control over the target page headers and we obviously want to hide the whole process from the user
You’ll find that it’s the priority that the target site puts on their own security that is most important. If they're unconcerned about JavaScript on other sites accessing their site, they can set the HTTP Access Control headers for cross-domain XMLHTTPRequest, provide a crossdomain.xml file for Flash, provide a JSONP API, or provide some hooks for iframe monitoring.
The second solution is to make the requests to a server on your domain which proxies the request to the target site. In certain circumstances you may be able to use a third party server which supports cross-domain or JSONP requests, like Yahoo! Pipes.
If neither of these is feasible, you'll need to convince the user to allow you to run your own code on their PC. This could be via a signed Java applet which requests special permissions, or your own custom browser plugins or extensions.
There are several ways including using JSONP with XMLHttpRequest, using Flash and using iframes.
Here is some information on this subject. http://snook.ca/archives/javascript/cross_domain_aj

Avoid x-domain solutions

I'm currently working on a web application that customers can add to their webpages by adding a javascript link to a js file on my server. The application read all the javascriptfiles from my sever, but I still get an error when trying to use ajax to get data from my database. I didn't think that would be a problem because the files is on my server.
Can I fix this or do I have to make a cross-browser solution? I don't have any control over the costumers server.
Thanks in advance
Mikael
This is not possible: When you execute a remote script, it runs in the context of the containing document.
There are some popular workarounds for this:
Using an iframe, which fixes the cross-domain problem but doesn't integrate well with the remote site (e.g. no custom styling)
Using JSONP to make cross-domain Ajax requests (detailed explanation here)
Using a server-side proxy script (not an option in this scenario)
Using YQL (I'm not familiar with this but it's said to work)
The same origin policy is based on the host document not the script itself.
You need to use a cross domain ajax technique.

Download file using ajax and webservice

There is this 3rd party webservice. One of the public webmethods available is a GetDocument() method. This method returns a Document object. The Document object has properties for File(byte[]), ContentType(string) ect.
My Question : Can I subscribe to this service using javascript(mootools) + ajax + JSON, return the document object, in this case an excel document, and force the file download?
It is true that typically you cannot initiate a download from JavaScript, but there is a flash component, Downloadify that does enable client side file generation.
So you can serve files for download from HTML/JavaScript.
With that problem solved, you still have the problem of how to get the data that you wish to serve from the source web service.
3rd party implies XSS (cross site scripting) which is a no-no using XmlHttpRequest (Ajax).
A possible solution to this problem could be to use a common hidden IFrame technique to get the data.
Simply have an appropriate (hidden?) form that correctly posts to the web service and point it's action to an hidden IFrame element upon which you are trapping the Load event and parse the data returned.
But current browsers have different levels of security measures that limit your ability to access IFrames with an external source so you are actually stuck here. Sorry to get your hopes up.
The only practical robust way to accomplish what you would like to do is to have a local server side script that can act as a proxy between your HTML/JavaScript and the external web service.
Using such a proxy, you can simply go back to using Ajax to get your data to serve up with Downloadify.
But then, since you are using a server script to get the data, why not just serve the data from the script for download?
These are just my observations on the problem domain you present.

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