XMLHttpRequest: responseXML property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

See full compatibility

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers, except for Service Workers.

The XMLHttpRequest.responseXML read-only property returns a 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 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 Content-Type as "text/xml" or "application/xml", you can use XMLHttpRequest.overrideMimeType() to parse it as XML anyway.

This property isn't available to workers.

Value

A Document from parsing the XML or HTML received using XMLHttpRequest, or null if no data was received or if the data is not XML/HTML.

Exceptions

InvalidStateError DOMException: Thrown if the 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

Specification
XMLHttpRequest # the-responsexml-attribute

Browser compatibility

	desktop					mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Opera	Safari	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet	WebView Android	WebView on iOS
`responseXML`	Chrome – Full support Chrome 1 (Release date: 2008-12-11) footnote Full support	Edge – Full support Edge 12 (Release date: 2015-07-29) footnote Full support	Firefox – Full support Firefox 1 (Release date: 2004-11-09) footnote footnote Before Firefox 51, an error parsing the received data added a `<parsererror>` node to the top of the `Document` and then returned the `Document` in whatever state it happens to be in. This was inconsistent with the specification. Starting with Firefox 51, this scenario now correctly returns `null` as per the spec.	Opera – Full support Opera 12.1 (Release date: 2012-11-20) footnote Full support	Safari – Full support Safari 3 (Release date: 2007-10-26) footnote Full support	Chrome Android – Full support Chrome Android 18 (Release date: 2012-06-27) footnote Full support	Firefox for Android – Full support Firefox for Android 4 (Release date: 2011-03-29) footnote footnote Before Firefox for Android 51, an error parsing the received data added a `<parsererror>` node to the top of the `Document` and then returned the `Document` in whatever state it happens to be in. This was inconsistent with the specification. Starting with Firefox for Android 51, this scenario now correctly returns `null` as per the spec.	Opera Android – Full support Opera Android 12.1 (Release date: 2012-10-09) footnote Full support	Safari on iOS – Full support Safari on iOS 1 (Release date: 2007-06-29) footnote Full support	Samsung Internet – Full support Samsung Internet 1 (Release date: 2013-04-27) footnote Full support	WebView Android – Full support WebView Android 4.4 (Release date: 2013-12-09) footnote Full support	WebView on iOS – Full support WebView on iOS 1 (Release date: 2007-06-29) footnote Full support

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Full support: Full support
: See implementation notes.