Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'getElementsByTagName' of null

learner guy · 01-31-2012, 04:52 PM

Hi i am learning xml , in a very simple code i got an error saying
"Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'getElementsByTagName' of null"
i am getting this in all browsers ,i have tried to look for solution on google but could not find ,Plz help

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><title>http request</title>
<head>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="twitterfinalcut/twittericon.jpg" />

</head>
<body>

<script type="text/javascript">
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
  {// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
 var  xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
  }
else
  {// code for IE6, IE5
  xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
  }
xmlhttp.open("GET","note.xml",false);
xmlhttp.send();
xmlDoc=xmlhttp.responseXML; 
  var x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("CD");
  document.write (x[0].getElementsByTagName("ARTIST")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
  document.write (x[0].getElementsByTagName("TITLE")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
 </script>

</body>
</html>

Here is the simple xml file "note.xml" code

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>


<CATALOG>
   <CD>
        <ARTIST>Kenny Rogers</ARTIST>
		<TITLE>For the good times</TITLE>

		

		<COUNTRY>UK</COUNTRY>

		<COMPANY>Mucik Master</COMPANY>

		<PRICE>8.70</PRICE>

		<YEAR>1995</YEAR>
  </CD>>
</CATALOG>

Alex Vincent · 01-31-2012, 08:28 PM

xmlDoc would be null if the returned file was not well-formed XML. There's a couple ways this could happen:

1. The content-type header was not a valid XML content type (it might've been text/plain, for example)
2. The XML document was not well-formed.

The latter doesn't appear to be the case (though you do have </CD>>, that's not a well-formedness violation).

learner guy · 02-01-2012, 02:05 PM

thanks for the reply , i have removed that typo of </CD>> but it is still not working

abduraooft · 02-01-2012, 02:56 PM

I get the output "Kenny RogersFor the good times " and I don't get any error in FF.