javascript - Sending xml post request to geoserver

This may be simple question but I can't get started. This tutorial from pen state university has xml request

  outputFormat="GML2"  – we would like gml2 as the return format
  xmlns:topp="http://www.openplans.org/topp"
  xmlns:wfs="http://www.opengis.net/wfs"
  xmlns:ogc="http://www.opengis.net/ogc"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.opengis.net/wfs
  http://schemas.opengis.net/wfs/1.0.0/WFS-basic.xsd">

    we want to query 
                bc_roads features
    
       only return features 
                                        with an ID of bc_roads.1
    
    

My question here is how do I send this request to geoserver using geoext or javascript?

Answer

You can do a post request in OpenLayers like this:

var postData = ""; //insert your data to post here

var request = new OpenLayers.Request.POST({
    url: "http://host/path",
    data: postData,
    headers: {
        "Content-Type": "text/xml;charset=utf-8"
    },

    callback: function (response) {
        //read the response from GeoServer
        var gmlReader = new OpenLayers.Format.GML({ extractAttributes: true });
        var features = gmlReader.read(response.responseText);
        // do what you want with the features returned...
    },
    failure: function (response) {
        alert("Something went wrong in the request");
    }
});

You can see more examples of how to request data in OpenLayers here:

Requesting Remote Data