Home/ Questions/Q 6860423
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-27T02:24:25+00:00

I’m having an issue reading the below XML document in Chrome – nothing seems

  • 0

I’m having an issue reading the below XML document in Chrome – nothing seems to turn up but it works perfectly fine in Firefox. Is it a browser compatibility issue?

  <html>
  <head>
    <title>XML</title>
    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script type='text/javascript'>

    function XMLload(){
        jQuery.post(url,function(data){getxml(data);},'xml');
    }

    function dataFromTag(node,t){
        var d=node.getElementsByTagName(t);
        if(d.length==0)
            return('');
        return(d[0].firstChild.nodeValue);
    }

    jQuery(document).ready(function(){XMLload();});

    // all the code above this line can be re-used without change
    // all the code below will need altering for a different document and different structure

    var url='cohort.xml';
    var xmlcohort;

    function getxml(xmldoc){
        xmlcohort = xmldoc.getElementsByTagName('student');

        var hstr = '<html><head><title></title></head><body>';
        hstr += '<p>Cohort:</p><form>';
        hstr += '<select size="' + xmlcohort.length + '" onclick="parent.student_info(this.selectedIndex);">';

        for( var i = 0; i < xmlcohort.length; i++ ) {
            hstr += '<option>' + dataFromTag(xmlcohort[i], 'name') + '</option>';
        }
        hstr += '</select></form></body></html>';

        with( document.getElementById('cohort').contentDocument ) {
            open();
            write(hstr);
            close();
        }
    }

    function student_info(idx) {
        var hstr = '<html><head><title></title></head><body><dl>';
        hstr += '<dt>Name</dt><dd>' + dataFromTag(xmlcohort[idx], 'name') + '</dd>';
        hstr += '<dt>Module</dt><dd>' + dataFromTag(xmlcohort[idx], 'module') + '</dd>';
        hstr += '<dt>Mark</dt><dd>' + dataFromTag(xmlcohort[idx], 'mark') + '</dd>';
        hstr += '</dl></body></html>';

        with( document.getElementById('student').contentDocument ) {
            open();
            write(hstr);
            close();
        }
    }

    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <iframe id='cohort' height='300' width='200'></iframe>
    <iframe id='student' height='300' width='200'></iframe>
    <p>Here is the <a href="cohort.xml">xml data</a></p>
  </body>
</html>

Here are the contents of cohort.xml:

<cohort>
<student>
<name>Bob</name>
<module>COA122</module>
<mark>72</mark>
</student>
<student>
<name>Alice</name>
<module>COB250</module>
<mark>84</mark>
</student>
<student>
<name>Kate</name>
<module>COP180</module>
<mark>99</mark>
</student>
</cohort>

I get this error when I run it from my hard drive. The entire page doesn’t load – it only works when I put it on a web server:

XMLHttpRequest cannot load file:///C:/Users/methuselah/Desktop/cohort/cohort.xml. Origin null is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This is a known issue in Chrome: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=40787

    If this is just for testing and development, there is a Chrome command line flag you can use to work around this: --allow-file-access-from-files. I just tested it and it makes your pages work locally in Chrome for me.

    Windows: chrome.exe --allow-file-access-from-files

    Mac: /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --allow-file-access-from-files

    Linux: Linux users don’t need instructions for how to get things working from the command-line! 😉

    • 0