XML document structures

An XML document object is a structure that contains a set of nested XML element structures. The following figure shows a section of the cfdump tag output for the document object for the XML in A simple XML document. This figure shows the long version of the dump, which provides complete details about the document object. Initially, ColdFusion displays a short version, with basic information. Click the dump header to change between short, long, and collapsed versions of the dump.


Output of the cfdump tag for an XML document

The following code displays this output. It assumes that you save the code in a file under your web root, such as C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\testdocs\employeesimple.xml

<cffile action="read" file="C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\testdocs\employeesimple.xml"
   variable="xmldoc">
<cfset mydoc = XmlParse(xmldoc)>
<cfdump var="#mydoc#">

The document object structure

At the top level, the XML document object has the following three entries:

Entry name Type Description

XmlRoot

Element

The root element of the document.

XmlComment

String

A string made of the concatenation of all comments on the document, that is, comments in the document prologue and epilog. This string does not include comments inside document elements.

XmlDocType

XmlNode

The DocType attribute of the document. This entry only exists if the document specifies a DocType. This value is read-only; you cannot set it after the document object has been created

This entry does not appear when cfdump displays an XML element structure.

The element structure

Each XML element has the following entries:

Entry name Type Description

XmlName

String

The name of the element; includes the namesapce prefix.

XmlNsPrefix

String

The prefix of the namespace.

XmlNsURI

String

The URI of the namespace.

XmlText or

XmlCdata

String

A string made of the concatenation of all text and CData text in the element, but not inside any child elements. When you assign a value to the XmlCdata element, ColdFusion puts the text inside a CDATA information item. When you retrieve information from document object, these element names return identical values.

XmlComment

String

A string made of the concatenation of all comments inside the XML element, but not inside any child elements.

XmlAttributes

Structure

All of this element's attributes, as name-value pairs.

XmlChildren

Array

All this element's children elements.

XmlParent

XmlNode

The parent DOM node of this element.

This entry does not appear when cfdump displays an XML element structure.

XmlNodes

Array

An array of all the XmlNode DOM nodes contained in this element.

This entry does not appear when cfdump displays an XML element structure.

XML DOM node structure

The following table lists the contents of an XML DOM node structure:

Entry name Type Description

XmlName

String

The node name. For nodes such as Element or Attribute, the node name is the element or attribute name.

XmlType

String

The node XML DOM type, such as Element or Text.

XmlValue

String

The node value. This entry is used only for Attribute, CDATA, Comment, and Text type nodes.

Note: The cfdump tag does not display XmlNode structures. If you try to dump an XmlNode structure, the cfdump tag displays "Empty Structure."

The following table lists the contents of the XmlName and XmlValue fields for each node type that is valid in the XmlType entry. The node types correspond to the objects types in the XML DOM hierarchy.

Node type XmlName xmlValue 
CDATA 

#cdata-section

Content of the CDATA section 

COMMENT 

#comment

Content of the comment 

ELEMENT

Tag name

Empty string 

ENTITYREF

Name of entity referenced

Empty string 

PI (processing instruction)

Target entire content excluding the target

Empty string 

TEXT 

#text

Content of the text node 

ENTITY

Entity name

Empty string 

NOTATION

Notation name

Empty string 

DOCUMENT 

#document

Empty string 

FRAGMENT 

#document-fragment

Empty string 

DOCTYPE

Document type name

Empty string

Note: Although XML attributes are nodes on the DOM tree, ColdFusion does not expose them as XML DOM node data structures. To view an element's attributes, use the element structure's XMLAttributes structure.

The XML document object and all its elements are exposed as DOM node structures. For example, you can use the following variable names to reference nodes in the DOM tree that you created from the XML example in A simple XML document:

mydoc.XmlName
mydoc.XmlValue
mydoc.XmlRoot.XmlName
mydoc.employee.XmlType
mydoc.employee.XmlNodes[1].XmlType

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