XMLHttpRequest: responseXML property

{{APIRef("XMLHttpRequest API")}} {{AvailableInWorkers("window_and_worker_except_service")}}

The XMLHttpRequest.responseXML read-only property returns a {{domxref("Document")}} containing the HTML or XML retrieved by the request; or null if the request was unsuccessful, has not yet been sent, or if the data can't be parsed as XML or HTML.

[!NOTE] The name responseXML is an artifact of this property's history; it works for both HTML and XML.

Usually, the response is parsed as "text/xml". If the {{domxref("XMLHttpRequest.responseType", "responseType")}} is set to "document" and the request was made asynchronously, instead the response is parsed as "text/html". responseXML is null for any other types of data, as well as for data: URLs.

If the server doesn't specify the {{HTTPHeader("Content-Type")}} as "text/xml" or "application/xml", you can use {{domxref("XMLHttpRequest.overrideMimeType()")}} to parse it as XML anyway.

This property isn't available to workers.

Value

A {{domxref("Document")}} from parsing the XML or HTML received using {{domxref("XMLHttpRequest")}}, or null if no data was received or if the data is not XML/HTML.

Exceptions

• InvalidStateError {{domxref("DOMException")}}
  • : Thrown if the {{domxref("XMLHttpRequest.responseType", "responseType")}} isn't either document or an empty string.

Examples

const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("GET", "/server");

// If specified, responseType must be empty string or "document"
xhr.responseType = "document";

// Force the response to be parsed as XML
xhr.overrideMimeType("text/xml");

xhr.onload = () => {
  if (xhr.readyState === xhr.DONE && xhr.status === 200) {
    console.log(xhr.response, xhr.responseXML);
  }
};

xhr.send();

Specifications

{{Specifications}}

Browser compatibility

{{Compat}}

See also

• {{domxref("XMLHttpRequest")}}
• {{domxref("XMLHttpRequest.response")}}
• {{domxref("XMLHttpRequest.responseType")}}
• Parsing and serializing XML
• Parsing XML into a DOM tree: {{domxref("DOMParser")}}
• Serializing a DOM tree into XML: {{domxref("XMLSerializer")}} (specifically, the {{domxref("XMLSerializer.serializeToString", "serializeToString()")}} method)