Ran into a problem with a jQuery AJAX script that parses returned XML. It wouldn't work on Google Chrome when looking for a namespaced xml node using jQuery.find().

Apparently this (xml namespaces) can cause jQuery some minor heartburn but it's not a show stopper.

A namespaced nodename in XML has a name space prefix a colon then the node name. e.g.

<ns1:ld_part>65989

Basically namespace prefixes in XML stop collisions if two different coders want to refer to some thing with the same name

<!-- a clash -->
<item>us</item>
<item>them</item>

<!-- namespacing 
same same but different
-->

<ns1:item>us</ns1:item>
<ns2:item>them</ns2:item>

This Fails on Google Chrome:

// resp is XML passed from an ajax call to a server
success: function(resp){
	var jData = $( resp ); // jQueryise it
        var recordTop = jData.find("ns1\\:ld_det"); // search for the node
        // alert( recordTop.size()) returns 0 on Google Chrome

The following used to work on old versions (1.4.x) of JQuery however on jQuery v 1.9.1  this fails:

success: function(resp){
           var jData = $( resp );
           var recordTop = jData.find("[nodeName=ns1:ld_det]");

This jQuery forum post provided the answer http://forum.jquery.com/topic/jquery-namespaces-xml-parsing-12-1-2010

In the comments below there are several options of what to do

However I have been trying to parse a SOAP reply on IE8, 9 and Chrome and find('namespace\\:name') doesn't seem to work for me.

Option 1: Native jQuery 1.9.1 

As mentioned in the comment by "Erik T" below use a double element declaration

jData.find('ns1\\:ld_det, ld_det');

Option 2: Define a jQuery custom function and you can just use filterNode('ns1:result')

This could be expensive

/* add this to a file and call it after
* the standard jquery library
*/ 
$.fn.filterNode = function(name) {
      return this.find('*').filter(function() {
        return this.nodeName === name;
      });
    };

Call filterNode on the SOAP/XML returned from the Server

$.ajax({
	type : 'POST',
	processData : false, // must be false so jquery doesn't parameterize
	// the POST
	url : proxy_url,
	contentType : "text/xml",
	dataType : "xml",
	data : post_qdoc.xml(), // convert jquery xml object to xml string
	beforeSend : function(xhr) {
		xhr.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", '""');
		xhr.setRequestHeader("SOAPTarget", post_url);
	},
	success : function(qdoc_response) {

		var response = $(qdoc_response).filterNode('ns1:result').text();
	},
	error : function(xhr, text_status, errorThrown) {

		global_error(text_status.toUpperCase() + ' : ' + errorThrown + ' : '
				+ 'Calling function = post_qdoc()');

	}
});

Tested Versions:

• Google Chrome version 5.0.375.126 (Fedora 13)
• jQuery JavaScript Library v1.4.2
• jQuery 1.9.1 and IE 8, IE. 9, Google Chrome 26.0.1410.64,