Web/API/DOMParser

The DOMParser interface provides the ability to parse XML or HTML source code from a string into a DOM Document.

Note: XMLHttpRequest can parse XML and HTML directly from a URL-addressable resource, returning a Document in its response property.

You can perform the opposite operation—converting a DOM tree into XML or HTML source—using the XMLSerializer interface.

In the case of an HTML document, you can also replace portions of the DOM with new DOM trees built from HTML by setting the value of the Element.innerHTML and outerHTML properties. These properties can also be read to fetch HTML fragments corresponding to the corresponding DOM subtree.

Syntax

const domparser = new DOMParser()​​

Methods

DOMParser.parseFromString()

Syntax

const doc = domparser.parseFromString(string, mimeType)

Return

Either Document or XMLDocument depending on the mimeType argument.

Parameters

This method has 2 parameters (both required):

string

The DOMString to be parsed. It must contain either HTML, xml, xhtml+xml, or svg document.

mimeType

A DOMString. This string determines a class of the the method's return value. The possible values are the following:

mimeType	doc.constructor
text/html	Document
text/xml	XMLDocument
application/xml	XMLDocument
application/xhtml+xml	XMLDocument
image/svg+xml	XMLDocument

Examples

Parsing XML

Once you have created a parser object, you can parse XML from a string using the parseFromString() method:

let parser = new DOMParser()
let doc = parser.parseFromString(stringContainingXMLSource, "application/xml")

Error handling

Note that if the parsing process fails, the DOMParser does not throw an exception, but instead returns an error document:

<parsererror xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/xml/parsererror.xml">
  (error description)
  <sourcetext>(a snippet of the source XML)</sourcetext>
</parsererror>

The parsing errors are also reported to the Error Console, with the document URI (see below) as the source of the error.

Parsing SVG or HTML

The DOMParser can also be used to parse an SVG document (Firefox 10.0 / Thunderbird 10.0 / SeaMonkey 2.7) or an HTML document (Firefox 12.0 / Thunderbird 12.0 / SeaMonkey 2.9). There are three different results possible, selected by the MIME type given.

1. If the MIME type is text/xml, the result will be an XMLDocument
2. If the MIME type is image/svg+xml, the result will be an SVGDocument
3. If the MIME type is text/html, the result will be an HTMLDocument

let parser = new DOMParser()
let doc = parser.parseFromString(stringContainingXMLSource, "application/xml")
// returns a Document, but not an SVGDocument nor an HTMLDocument

parser = new DOMParser();
doc = parser.parseFromString(stringContainingSVGSource, "image/svg+xml")
// returns a SVGDocument, which also is a Document.

parser = new DOMParser();
doc = parser.parseFromString(stringContainingHTMLSource, "text/html")
// returns an HTMLDocument, which also is a Document.

DOMParser HTML extension

/*
 * DOMParser HTML extension
 * 2012-09-04
 * 
 * By Eli Grey, http://eligrey.com
 * Public domain.
 * NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
 */

/*! @source https://gist.github.com/1129031 */
/*global document, DOMParser*/

(function(DOMParser) {
    "use strict";

    var proto = DOMParser.prototype, 
    nativeParse = proto.parseFromString;

    // Firefox/Opera/IE throw errors on unsupported types
    try {
        // WebKit returns null on unsupported types
        if ((new DOMParser()).parseFromString("", "text/html")) {
            // text/html parsing is natively supported
            return;
        }
    } catch (ex) {}

    proto.parseFromString = function(markup, type) {
        if (/^\s*text\/html\s*(?:;|$)/i.test(type)) {
            var doc = document.implementation.createHTMLDocument("");
                if (markup.toLowerCase().indexOf('<!doctype') > -1) {
                    doc.documentElement.innerHTML = markup;
                } else {
                    doc.body.innerHTML = markup;
                }
            return doc;
        } else {
            return nativeParse.apply(this, arguments);
        }
    };
}(DOMParser));

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
HTML Living StandardThe definition of 'DOM parsing' in that specification.	Living Standard

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

Update compatibility data on GitHub

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
DOMParser	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support 9	Opera Full support 8	Safari Full support 3.2	WebView Android Full support 1	Chrome Android Full support 18	Firefox Android Full support 4	Opera Android Full support 10.1	Safari iOS Full support 2	Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0
DOMParser() constructor	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support 9	Opera Full support 8	Safari Full support 3.2	WebView Android Full support Yes	Chrome Android Full support 18	Firefox Android Full support Yes	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS ?	Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0
parseFromString	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support 9	Opera Full support 8	Safari Full support 3.2	WebView Android Full support Yes	Chrome Android Full support Yes	Firefox Android Full support Yes	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS Full support Yes	Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes
parseFromString: HTML (text/html) support	Chrome Full support 31	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 12	IE Full support 10	Opera Full support 17	Safari Full support 9.1	WebView Android Full support 37	Chrome Android Full support 31	Firefox Android Full support 14	Opera Android ?	Safari iOS ?	Samsung Internet Android Full support 3.0
parseFromString: SVG (image/svg+xml) support	Chrome Full support 4	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 10	IE Full support 10	Opera Full support 15	Safari Full support 3.2	WebView Android Full support 37	Chrome Android Full support 18	Firefox Android Full support 10	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS ?	Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0
parseFromString: XML (application/xml) support	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support 9	Opera Full support 8	Safari Full support 3.2	WebView Android Full support Yes	Chrome Android Full support 18	Firefox Android Full support Yes	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS ?	Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0

Legend

Full support  

Full support

Compatibility unknown  

Compatibility unknown

See also

• Parsing and serializing XML
• XMLHttpRequest
• XMLSerializer
• JSON.parse() - counterpart for JSON documents.

DOMParser by Mozilla Contributors is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.