Strip useless whitespace from XML

[amattie]

Does anyone have any idea on how I can strip the extra whitespace in
the XML that shows up when I receive a response from an ASP.NET 2.0
webservice? This has been discussed before, but no one has ever come up
with a good answer to what seems like such a common question.

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...fff1b27460a421
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...240db31e1d3fe7
http://groups.google.com/group/micro...a3026a4d286e63

It just seems very silly to have it included since another program will
be consuming it, and since that other program could care less about
whitespace. Not only is it a waste of bandwidth (albeit not _that_
much), but it causes serious implications for me when I try to parse
through the XML document in JavaScript.

For example, if the XmlDocument that I return has two nodes on it, the
child nodes of the root element of the response has five child nodes in
JavaScript when I parse the doc in Firefox (two are my elements, and
three are the whitespace). IE does return that there are two child
nodes, but the whitespace is still there nonetheless. I can code around
it by building a function that looks for the right tag name or that
ignores whitespace elements, but it's dumb that I'd have to do that in
the first place.

Also, contrary to the other posters, I am certain that in this case the
whitespace actually does come from the server and isn't being inserted
in the document for readability reasons or whatever. I've used Fiddler
and taken a look at the hex data that comes back, and, sure enough,
there is a <CRLFat the end of every node and the indent spaces at the
beginning of every node.

Any takers on this question that seems to have been around forever
without a good answer?

[John Saunders]

<am*****@gmail. comwrote in message
news:11******** **************@ m7g2000cwm.goog legroups.com...

Does anyone have any idea on how I can strip the extra whitespace in
the XML that shows up when I receive a response from an ASP.NET 2.0
webservice? This has been discussed before, but no one has ever come up
with a good answer to what seems like such a common question.

My answer would be that you're probably wasting more time thinking about
stripping whitespace than will ever be wasted in sending and receiving it.

Is this really the next most important thing you have to do? Is this the
next performance bottleneck in your application?

John

[amattie]

Like I said, it's not so much about bandwidth as much as it is a pain
to deal with in all of my JavaScript apps that count the whitespace as
actual nodes. It causes problems when I both iterate through the an
element's' child nodes as well as try to directly access a child node
by index. For example, when I send an XMLHTTPRequest to the server and
know that I'm only looking to get a single node back, I actually have
to either a) get childNode[1] instead of childNode[0], b) call
Prototype's Element.cleanWh itespace() on the parent node (which doesn't
handle recursive nodes for XML well it seems), or c) check the nodeType
in each one of my nodes manually in a loop. As I said, there are ways
around it, but doesn't it seem odd to anyone that it's not easily
disabled?

The only reason I ask all this is because it's a constant pain in my
side to have to program around it every time. If there was something I
can do globally per server or web.config that would strip out the
useless whitespace, it would ultimately save me much more time than
having to code around it in every single one of my apps.
On Nov 6, 8:33 pm, "John Saunders" <john.saunder s at trizetto.com>
wrote:

<amat...@gmail. comwrote in messagenews:11* *************** ******@m7g2000c wm.googlegroups .com...

Does anyone have any idea on how I can strip the extra whitespace in
the XML that shows up when I receive a response from an ASP.NET 2.0
webservice? This has been discussed before, but no one has ever come up
with a good answer to what seems like such a common question.My answer would be that you're probably wasting more time thinking about

stripping whitespace than will ever be wasted in sending and receiving it.

Is this really the next most important thing you have to do? Is this the
next performance bottleneck in your application?

John

[John Saunders]

<am*****@gmail. comwrote in message
news:11******** *************@m 7g2000cwm.googl egroups.com...

Like I said, it's not so much about bandwidth as much as it is a pain
to deal with in all of my JavaScript apps that count the whitespace as
actual nodes.

Whitespace _is_ a node. It's a whitespace node, not an element or attribute.
If your JavaScript code ignores whitespace nodes (as it no doubt ignores
comment nodes), then it should have no problems.

Am I mistaken?

John

[amattie]

While I understand that it's a node, I'm wondering if there's an option
that I can disable the output of such nodes since they screw up my
application. Yes, it is definitely possible to have JavaScript check if
a node is a whitespace node and ignore it, but it gets annoying that I
have to program around it _every single time_. It would be so much
easier to just do this:

// where firstChild is the root element and where I want childNode[0]
to be the string node returned from the webservice
var nodeImLookingFo r = serverResponse. firstChild.chil dNode[0];

.... rather than this ...

// what happens if msft suddenly disables whitespace by default on me
or Opera / IE6 handle it one way and Safari / Firefox / IE7 handle it
another?
// would I have to make cases for each browser then??
var nodeImLookingFo r;
if (isIE)
nodeImLookingFo r = serverResponse. firstChild.chil dNode[0];
else
nodeImLookingFo r = serverResponse. firstChild.chil dNode[1];

.... or this ...

// this is a pain to do every time if all I want is the first node!
var nodeImLookingFo r;
for (var i = 0; i < nodeImLookingFo r.childNodes.le ngth; i++) {
if (serverResponse .childNodes[i].nodeType == 3)
continue;
nodeImLookingFo r = serverResponse. childNodes[i];
}

See how silly it is to have to either a) write a global function that I
have to remember to include in every project I do that will fix this,
or b) manually program around it every time? I assure you that,
considering how often I have to address the issue, disabling the output
of unnecessary whitespace nodes will be worth it for me and any other
developer that has to contend with differences in how JavaScript is
handled in different browsers and the annoyance of having to work
around it as often as I have to.
On Nov 8, 4:22 am, "John Saunders" <john.saunder s at trizetto.com>
wrote:

<amat...@gmail. comwrote in messagenews:11* *************** *****@m7g2000cw m.googlegroups. com...

Like I said, it's not so much about bandwidth as much as it is a pain
to deal with in all of my JavaScript apps that count the whitespace as
actual nodes.Whitespac e _is_ a node. It's a whitespace node, not an element or attribute.

If your JavaScript code ignores whitespace nodes (as it no doubt ignores
comment nodes), then it should have no problems.

Am I mistaken?

John

[John Saunders]

<am*****@gmail. comwrote in message
news:11******** *************@f 16g2000cwb.goog legroups.com...

While I understand that it's a node, I'm wondering if there's an option
that I can disable the output of such nodes since they screw up my
application. Yes, it is definitely possible to have JavaScript check if
a node is a whitespace node and ignore it, but it gets annoying that I
have to program around it _every single time_. It would be so much
easier to just do this:

// where firstChild is the root element and where I want childNode[0]
to be the string node returned from the webservice
var nodeImLookingFo r = serverResponse. firstChild.chil dNode[0];

(sigh) If you insist on ignoring important details of the standards you're
using, then you're going to have problems.

Whitespace nodes and comment nodes are to be expected. Even if you could get
..NET to stop sending the whitespace today, you still could not guarantee
that a comment node wouldn't slip in somehow.

John

[amattie]

It's becoming quite pointless to argue with you here, but I'll bite
once more even though I was just looking for a quick fix.

I'm absolutely, definitely not looking to ignore any standards -- take
a look at my example code above if you don't believe me. Even though
Microsoft's own IE 6 _does_ ignore the standard that the whitespace is
a node, Firefox does not. Therefore, I have to program around it to be
truly standards compliant. If I wanted to ignore standards, I'd just
let IE's busted XML parsing engine ignore the standards for me.

I suppose that, overall, I'm really frustrated that I don't have
control over the output of my webservice. I'm not complaining that
whitespace or comments shouldn't be nodes. I'm just wondering if there
was a way I could disable the automatic output of them so I don't have
to deal with them in my code. Is it really that unreasonable to think
that, if I just wanted to return a single string node without any
whitespace or comments, I could?

Goodness. I didn't expect to start a flame war or bash any standards /
companies. I'm just looking for some quick help from someone else who
might be better educated on webservice output than I am.
On Nov 8, 9:12 pm, "John Saunders" <john.saunder s at trizetto.com>
wrote:

<amat...@gmail. comwrote in messagenews:11* *************** *****@f16g2000c wb.googlegroups .com...

While I understand that it's a node, I'm wondering if there's an option
that I can disable the output of such nodes since they screw up my
application. Yes, it is definitely possible to have JavaScript check if
a node is a whitespace node and ignore it, but it gets annoying that I
have to program around it _every single time_. It would be so much
easier to just do this:

// where firstChild is the root element and where I want childNode[0]
to be the string node returned from the webservice
var nodeImLookingFo r = serverResponse. firstChild.chil dNode[0];(sigh) If you insist on ignoring important details of the standards you're

using, then you're going to have problems.

Whitespace nodes and comment nodes are to be expected. Even if you could get
.NET to stop sending the whitespace today, you still could not guarantee
that a comment node wouldn't slip in somehow.

John

[John Saunders]

<am*****@gmail. comwrote in message
news:11******** **************@ b28g2000cwb.goo glegroups.com.. .

It's becoming quite pointless to argue with you here, but I'll bite
once more even though I was just looking for a quick fix.

The reason you're unlikely to find a quick fix is that you're trying to fix
something that's not supposed to matter. You appear to want the fix because
it appears that you can't be bothered to write code which takes into
consideration that whitespace and comment nodes may be interspersed with
other nodes. My point was simply that you don't need the quick fix if you
cod to the standard.

Obviously, if someone reading this knows of the quick fix the OP is looking
for, then please provide it. When you do provide the quick fix, you should
probably indicate whether the fix is likely to break in the future. For
instance, will his code break if he some day configures his web service with
a Soap Extension that happens to produce whitespace nodes.
John

[amattie]

You are correct in that I don't want to be bothered to write code that
I don't believe I should have to and that I believe there should be an
easy fix for. It seems that Microsoft even recognized this issue by
including a PreserveWhitesp ace property on the XmlDocument class, but
missed the inclusion of it into the webservice as far as I can tell. I
was just looking for someone else to confirm this for me.

You're argument for me coding around something "that's not supposed to
matter" is really quite juvenile if you think about it. The point your
trying to make does not target my original question at all (which,
again, has nothing to do with standards but rather the output of the
data). It's almost as if you're arguing with me because you don't have
a good answer and you just feel like arguing.

For anyone else suggesting any information on a fix, I would also like
to point out that I will have full control over the JavaScript,
webservice, servers, and any / all server-side caches and/or proxies
for the lifetime of the applications I make. Therefore, I won't need to
worry about any random third parties injecting whitespace or comments
into my XML via SOAP extensions or anything else.

[John Saunders]

<am*****@gmail. comwrote in message
news:11******** **************@ b28g2000cwb.goo glegroups.com.. .

You are correct in that I don't want to be bothered to write code that
I don't believe I should have to and that I believe there should be an
easy fix for. It seems that Microsoft even recognized this issue by
including a PreserveWhitesp ace property on the XmlDocument class, but
missed the inclusion of it into the webservice as far as I can tell. I
was just looking for someone else to confirm this for me.

You're argument for me coding around something "that's not supposed to
matter" is really quite juvenile if you think about it. The point your
trying to make does not target my original question at all (which,
again, has nothing to do with standards but rather the output of the
data).

XML web services aren't standards-based?

>It's almost as if you're arguing with me because you don't have
a good answer and you just feel like arguing.

For anyone else suggesting any information on a fix, I would also like
to point out that I will have full control over the JavaScript,
webservice, servers, and any / all server-side caches and/or proxies
for the lifetime of the applications I make. Therefore, I won't need to
worry about any random third parties injecting whitespace or comments
into my XML via SOAP extensions or anything else.

In this case, you'd be fine, unless Microsoft changed the output format.
That's not something you have control over.

John