***Since version 0.7.0 this package is published to npm as [`@xmldom/xmldom`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@xmldom/xmldom) and no longer as [`xmldom`](https://www.npmjs.com/package/xmldom), because [we are no longer able to publish `xmldom`](https://github.com/xmldom/xmldom/issues/271).***
*For better readability in the docs we will continue to talk about this library as "xmldom".*
xmldom is a javascript [ponyfill](https://ponyfill.com/) to provide the following APIs [that are present in modern browsers](https://caniuse.com/xml-serializer) to other runtimes:
- convert an XML string into a DOM tree
```
new DOMParser().parseFromString(xml, mimeType) => Document
```
- create, access and modify a DOM tree
```
new DOMImplementation().createDocument(...) => Document
```
- serialize a DOM tree back into an XML string
```
new XMLSerializer().serializeToString(node) => string
The target runtimes `xmldom` supports are currently Node >= v10 (ES5) and Rhino ([not tested as part of CI](https://github.com/xmldom/xmldom/discussions/214)).
When deciding how to fix bugs or implement features, `xmldom` tries to stay as close as possible to the various [related specifications/standards](#specs).
As indicated by the version starting with `0.`, this implementation is not feature complete and some implemented features differ from what the specifications describe.
**Issues and PRs for such differences are always welcome, even when they only provide a failing test case.**
This project was forked from it's [original source](https://github.com/jindw/xmldom) in 2019, more details about that transition can be found in the [CHANGELOG](CHANGELOG.md#maintainer-changes).
The implementation is based on several specifications:
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<a href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xmldom/xmldom/master/docs/specs.svg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" ></a>
### DOM Parsing and Serialization
From the [W3C DOM Parsing and Serialization (WD 2016)](https://www.w3.org/TR/2016/WD-DOM-Parsing-20160517/) `xmldom` provides an implementation for the interfaces:
-`DOMParser`
-`XMLSerializer`
Note that there are some known deviations between this implementation and the W3 specifications.
Note: [The latest version of this spec](https://w3c.github.io/DOM-Parsing/) has the status "Editors Draft", since it is under active development. One major change is that [the definition of the `DOMParser` interface has been moved to the HTML spec](https://w3c.github.io/DOM-Parsing/#the-domparser-interface)
### DOM
The original author claims that xmldom implements [DOM Level 2] in a "fully compatible" way and some parts of [DOM Level 3], but there are not enough tests to prove this. Both Specifications are now superseded by the [DOM Level 4 aka Living standard] wich has a much broader scope than xmldom.
xmldom implements the following interfaces (most constructors are currently not exposed):
-`Attr`
-`CDATASection`
-`CharacterData`
-`Comment`
-`Document`
-`DocumentFragment`
-`DocumentType`
-`DOMException` (constructor exposed)
-`DOMImplementation` (constructor exposed)
-`Element`
-`Entity`
-`EntityReference`
-`LiveNodeList`
-`NamedNodeMap`
-`Node` (constructor exposed)
-`NodeList`
-`Notation`
-`ProcessingInstruction`
-`Text`
more details are available in the (incomplete) [API Reference](#api-reference) section.
### HTML
xmldom does not have any goal of supporting the full spec, but it has some capability to parse, report and serialize things differently when "detecting HTML" (by checking the default namespace).
There is an upcoming change to better align the implementation with the latest specs, related to <https://github.com/xmldom/xmldom/issues/203>.
### SAX, XML, XMLNS
xmldom has an own SAX parser implementation to do the actual parsing, which implements some interfaces in alignment with the Java interfaces SAX defines:
-`XMLReader`
-`DOMHandler`
There is an idea/proposal to make ti possible to replace it with something else in <https://github.com/xmldom/xmldom/issues/55>
