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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-12T22:52:13+00:00

I am trying to count the number of li elements on a remote page,

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I am trying to count the number of li elements on a remote page, called file.xml. What am I doing wrong? Sorry for the easy question but I just can’t figure this out.

Javascript:

<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
$.get('/file.xml', function(data)
{
var allslides = $(data).find('li'),
var slidenumber = $allslides.length;
alert(slidenumber);
});
});
</script>

HTML (contents of file.xml):

    <body>
    <li><h2>Headline1</h2><span class="desctext">Description</span></li>
    <li><h2>Headline2</h2><span class="desctext">Description</span></li>
    <li><h2>Headline3</h2><span class="desctext">Description</span></li>
</body>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Try to specify that you are loading an XML file:

    $.ajax({
    url      : '/file.xml',
    dataType : 'xml',
    success  : function (data) {
       var $allslides = $(data).find('li'),
           slidenumber = $allslides.length;
       alert(slidenumber);
    },
    error    : function () { /* don't forget to handle errors */ }
});

    Also I noticed that your variable names don’t really match-up, first you use allslides then you use $allslides. I normalized those variable names in my example code.

    It also kind of looks like you’re returning HTML rather than XML. Which will work, just change dataType : 'xml' to dataType : 'html' (or leave the option blank as html is the default). In a general sense it’s a good idea to specify a content-type rather than letting jQuery guess on its own.

    Documentation for $.ajax(): http://api.jquery.com/jquery.ajax/

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