jQuery/JavaScript: Cycles an XML file on successful load via ajax and parses contents into HTML. In this example, we are using an Employee xml file with basic information parsing

parseXML.js

/* Tested with jquery-1.7.2.min.js */
$(window).load(function () {

  "use strict";

  /* Cycles XML file on successful load via ajax and parses contents into HTML */
  function parseXML(xml) {

    /* Variable declaration */
    var outHTML = "", employee, sId, sFirstname, sSurname, sAddress;

    /* For each 'Employee' section in the XML file, extract information */
    $(xml).find('Employee').each(function () {

      /* Extract and set employee details */
      employee = $(this);
      sID = $.trim(employee.find('ID').text());
      sFirstname = $.trim(employee.find('Firstname').text());
      sSurname = $.trim(employee.find('Surname').text());
      sAddress = $.trim(employee.find('Address').text());

      /* Build HTML segment to put into the main content */
      outHTML += "<div class='employee'>";
      outHTML += "  <p>ID: " + sID + "</p>";
      outHTML += "  <p>Name: " + sSurname + ", " + sFirstname + "</p>";
      outHTML += "  <p>Address: " + sAddress + "</p>";
      outHTML += "</div>";
      
    });

    /* Append the employee to div.content with previously built outHTML var */
    $(".content").append(outHTML);

  }

  /* Displays error to div with class of status if one is thrown from the Ajax parser */
  function err(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) {
    $(".status").append("<strong>TextStatus:</strong> " + textStatus + "<br /><strong>ErrorThrown:</strong> " + errorThrown);
  }

  /* Create ajax object for XML parsing */
  /* cache: set to false to ensure xml file is loaded new everytime, set to true otherwise */
  /* url: must be absolute path */
  $.ajax({
    type: "GET"
    , contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8"
    , url: "http://www.website.com/file/location/thefile.xml"
    , dataType: "xml"
    , cache: false
    , success: parseXML
    , error: err
  });
  
});