Question

I’m new to JavaScript and I’m not too familiar with the syntax.

I want to know how the function

{       
    /*
   Data is split into distributions and relations - so append them
    */
    //getURLParameters();
    /*** Read in and parse the Distributome.xml DB ***/
    var xmlhttp=createAjaxRequest();
    var xmlDoc, xmlDoc1;
    xmlhttp.open("GET","distributome-relations.xml",false);
    xmlhttp.send();
    xmlDoc = xmlhttp.responseXML;
    xmlhttp=createAjaxRequest();
    xmlhttp.open("GET","distributome-references.xml",false);
    xmlhttp.send();
    xmlDoc1 = xmlhttp.responseXML;
    var node = xmlDoc.importNode(xmlDoc1.getElementsByTagName("references").item(0), true);
    xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("distributome").item(0).appendChild(node);
        try{ 
        DistributomeXML_Objects=xmlDoc.documentElement.childNodes; 
    }catch(error){ 
        DistributomeXML_Objects=xmlDoc.childNodes; 
    } 

    traverseXML(false, null, DistributomeXML_Objects, distributome.nodes, distributome.edges, distributome.references, distributomeNodes, referenceNodes);

    xmlhttp=createAjaxRequest();
    xmlhttp.open("GET","Distributome.xml.pref",false);
    xmlhttp.send();
    if (!xmlhttp.responseXML.documentElement && xmlhttp.responseStream)
        xmlhttp.responseXML.load(xmlhttp.responseStream);
    var ontologyOrder = xmlhttp.responseXML;    
    getOntologyOrderArray(ontologyOrder);
            //console.log("firstread: xmlDoc: " xmlDoc);
}

I’m trying to print the contents of xmlDoc so I can examine the contents the next time I assign values to the variable so I know that I am creating a valid document.

For the purposes of clarification – I am using ProtoVis and want to redraw the nodes after I upload an XML file containing some data.

The first issue I need to fix is creating a valid xmlDoc so that I can display newer information and so wanted to view xmlDoc contents so I could compare it to the next time xmlDoc is assigned a value using the file uploaded.

Thanks for your time!

Edit: I realised that the console.log was missing a comma.

Edit: My question is when the function is executed – given as I can’t explicitly call it

Answer 1

Your syntax is wrong. You are missing a + to concatenate the strings:

console.log("firstread: xmlDoc: " + xmlDoc);