XML Tutorial
Lesson 7: Accessing Typed XML Values

Updated: November 4, 1998

What is a typed XML value?

Microsoft is providing this release of XML Schema with data type support, as a technology preview that may be useful for developers interested in building prototypes and gaining experience with schema and rich data types. Microsoft is actively involved in defining the emerging W3C XML schema standard and will track this effort. Developers should note that this version of XML Schema is subject to change.

Therefore, in addition to having a string value, each XML element can also have a typed value. For example, the following XML element:

<date>1998-05-23</date>

can have both a value of "1970-09-30" and a typed value of "Wed Sep 30 00:00:00 PDT 1970".

How do I access typed XML values?

It is possible to access typed data through the XML object model. Just as you can retrieve the value of an element by calling the nodeValue property on that element's child text node, you can retrieve the typed value of an element by calling the nodeTypedValue property on the element itself.

For example, consider the following XML document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<weather xmlns="x-schema:weatherSchema.xml">
  <date>1998-05-23</date>
  <degrees>67.5</degrees>
</weather>

where "weatherSchema.xml" is the following file:

<Schema xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-data" xmlns:dt="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:datatypes">
  <ElementType name="date" content="textOnly" dt:type="date"/>
  <ElementType name="degrees" content="textOnly" dt:type="float"/>
  <ElementType name="weather" content="eltOnly">
    <element type="date"/>
    <element type="degrees"/>
  </ElementType>
</Schema>

If you navigate to the degrees element (xmlDocument.documentElement.childNodes.item(1)), you can access its typed value by calling nodeTypedValue(xmlDocument.documentElement.childNodes.item(1).nodeTypedValue).

Try it!

Sorry! The interactive exercises require Internet Explorer 5 Beta .

Did you find this article useful? Gripes? Compliments? Suggestions for other articles? Write us!

Back to top