XMLSerializer: serializeToString() method

The {{domxref("XMLSerializer")}} method serializeToString() constructs a string representing the specified {{Glossary("DOM")}} tree in {{Glossary("XML")}} form.

Syntax

js-nolint

serializeToString(rootNode)

Parameters

rootNode
- : The {{domxref("Node")}} to use as the root of the DOM tree or subtree for which to construct an XML representation.

Return value

A string containing the XML representation of the specified DOM tree.

Exceptions

{{jsxref("TypeError")}}
- : Thrown if the specified rootNode is not a compatible node type. The root node must be either {{domxref("Node")}} or {{domxref("Attr")}}.
InvalidStateError {{domxref("DOMException")}}
- : Thrown if the tree could not be successfully serialized, probably due to issues with the content's compatibility with XML serialization.
SyntaxError {{domxref("DOMException")}}
- : Thrown if a serialization of HTML was requested but could not succeed due to the content not being well-formed.

Usage notes

Compatible node types

The specified root node—and all of its descendants—must be compatible with the XML serialization algorithm. The root node itself must be either a {{domxref("Node")}} or {{domxref("Attr")}} object.

The following types are also permitted as descendants of the root node, in addition to Node and Attr:

{{domxref("DocumentType")}}
{{domxref("Document")}}
{{domxref("DocumentFragment")}}
{{domxref("Element")}}
{{domxref("Comment")}}
{{domxref("Text")}}
{{domxref("ProcessingInstruction")}}
{{domxref("Attr")}}

If any other type is encountered, a {{jsxref("TypeError")}} exception is thrown.

Notes on the resulting XML

There are some things worth noting about the XML output by serializeToString():

For XML serializations, Element and Attr nodes are always serialized with their {{domxref("Element.namespaceURI", "namespaceURI")}} intact. This may mean that a previously-specified {{domxref("Element.prefix", "prefix")}} or default namespace may be dropped or altered.
The resulting XML is compatible with the HTML parser.
Elements in the HTML namespace that have no child nodes (thereby representing empty tags) are serialized with both begin and end tags ("<someelement></someelement>") instead of using the empty-element tag ("<someelement/>").