XML to jQuery to String?

Here's one way to do it using jQuery's $.parseXML() function:

var contentAsString = $($.parseXML(xml)).find("explination").html();

$.parseXML() returns an XML document, so if you feed that into $() you get back a jQuery object so then you can use jQuery traversal methods like .find() to get the element you care about and then take its content as a string including tags using .html().

Or for the particular xml input you show you can probably get away with pretending your xml is html and do this:

var contentAsString = $(xml).html();

Note that neither method needs your "crazy converter" at all.

"it fails because it can't handle the array returned by children()."

.children() doesn't return an array, it returns a jQuery object (which is array-like).

Provided that you want to extract the contents as a string, perhaps you could do something like this:

var doc = $($.parseXML(xml));
var content = $("<p>").append(doc.find("p").clone()).html();

Here is a fiddle to demonstrate: http://jsfiddle.net/23g6N/

I've tryed what you described, but the Jquery .html() function ignores the lowercase node characters. I needed something to parse an XML to a String in a case sensitive way, so I've developed next plugin my own. Copy next code to a file and save as a .js file.

/* 
 * THIS COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
 * 
 * This JQuery plugin just provides an easy way to parse an XML document object 
 * into a case sensitive string.
 * Self closing is not detected, and will be stringifyed as an empty xml node.
 * 
 * Tested in the following browsers:
 * -Chrome (v 33.0.1750.154 m)
 * -IE9 (v 9.0.8112.16421)
 * -Firefox (v 28.0)
 * -Opera (v 12.16)
 * -Safari (v 5.1.7 (7534.57.2))
 * 
 * @author Germán Coines Laguna - [email protected]
 * 
 * @usage $.fn.xmlToString(xmlObj)
 * @param xmlObj - An XML document object
 * @returns The Xml stringifyed.
 * 
 * @version 1.0
 * @depends JQuery v.1.9.1
 */
(function($){

  $.fn.xmltostring = function(xml)
  {
    var xmlText = "";

    $(xml).children().each(function(i,node){
      stringifyNode(node);
    });

    function stringifyNode(nd)
    {
      //obtain analisys obj
      var az = analyzeNode(nd);

      xmlText += "<" + az.nm + " " + az.ats + ">";

      if(az.chd) $(nd).children().each(function(i, ch){
        stringifyNode(ch);
      });

      xmlText += "</" + az.nm + ">";
    }

    function analyzeNode(nodeObj)
    {
      var obj = {nm: "", ats:"", chd: false, txt: ""};

      //Name
      obj.nm = nodeObj.nodeName;
      //Attributes
      $(nodeObj.attributes).each(function(i, at){
        obj.ats += at.name + "=\"" + at.value + "\" ";
      });
      //Children
      obj.chd = $(nodeObj).children().length > 0;
      //Text
      obj.txt = $(nodeObj).text();      

      return obj;
    }

    return xmlText;
   };  

 }(jQuery));

I haven't tested timmings for such huge XML files, but It did what I've required.

Hope It helps.

Here's an example on how to use it (Note you have to register the JQuery .js file, the file you saved with the code above, and replacing "yourPathToFile/yourFileName.xml" by your required values):

<script type="text/javascript" >

  $(document).ready(function(){

    var xml = loadXMLDoc("yourPathToFile/yourFileName.xml");

    alert($.fn.iwebxmltostring(xml));

    //var test = $.parseXML($("#result").text());

    //alert($(test).children().prop('nodeName'));

  });      

</script>

Good bye!