Document Object Model

The Document Object Model, commonly abbreviated as the DOM, is an interface for accessing and manipulating the elements of an XML, HTML, or XHTML document, standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and typically offered as an API within the JavaScript engine of a web browser.

The DOM was first introduced by Netscape with their inclusion of JavaScript in the Navigator 2.0 web browser in 1996, and was subsequently imitated by Microsoft in Internet Explorer 3.0. No standard yet existed for the DOM, however, and compatibility issues went unresolved until the W3C standardized a DOM API in 1998, with significant revisions in 2000. Finally by 2005, with the release of Internet Explorer 6, a large portion of this API was well-implemented across the range of popular web browsers. Scripting the DOM is now a common use of JavaScript in websites across the internet.

A read-only subset of the DOM is available for processing XML results from <data/> requests within the Plum Voice Platform. This allows VoiceXML 2.1 applications to perform requests to web services during a call, retrieve XML, parse the results for data, and use those results to alter the rest of the call.

The following is an example of the usage of the DOM properties documentElement, firstChild, and nodeValue after retrieving the XML <tag>World</tag> with a <data/> tag:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<vxml version="2.1">
  <form>
    <data name="domstuff" src="datatag.xml"/>
    <block>
      Hello <value expr="domstuff.documentElement.firstChild.nodeValue"/>.
    </block>
  </form>
</vxml>

Related Links

• DOM Bindings required by VoiceXML 2.1 - W3C Standard
• The <data/> tag - Plum Voice Hosting Documentation