Hi Thomas
> >Though I like your idea of returning the Element such that these methods
> >could be
> >chained.
>
> Not my idea :) -- I've seen it in a number of places before... most
> recently JDOM (ducks to avoid missile :)
:-)
Yes I think returning the Element when adding text or entities sounds a good
idea.
Though the addElement() returns the new Element child rather than the parent
so care should be taken with nestings.
E.g. if you wished to add mixed content to a <foo> element you could do the
following, notice the use of the "getParent()" call to continue adding
content to the "foo" element.
Element foo = ..;
foo.addText( "some text " ).addElement( "b" ).addText( "this is
bold" ).getParent().addText( " some text " ).addElement( "i" ).addText(
"this is italic" ).getParent().addText( " more text ");
This would generate the XML fragment
<foo>some text <b>this is bold</b> some text <i>this is italic</i> more text
</foo>
If the getParent() is not used then nesting would occur...
<foo>some text <b>this is bold some text <i>this is italic more text
</i></b></foo>
> >Element foo = ...;
> >foo.addText( "hello" ).addCDATA( "< > &" ).addEntity( "amp" );
> >
> >What do you think of the idea of setAttributeValue() returning a
reference
> >to the element so that they could be nested too?
> >
> >Element foo = ...;
> >foo.setAttributeValue( "amount", "10" ).setAttributeValue( "currency",
> >"GBP" );
>
> Sounds useful, I'd suggest it applies to all setXXX methods? Unless you
can
> see a reason for not keeping it consistent?
Agreed. Will do.
>
> > > Only addEntity() seems non-orthogonal - this takes a String and
returns
> > > _Entity_, a reference to the Entity object just created.
> >
> >Agreed. I think that addEntity() should return a reference to the
Element.
>
> Great. Could break existing code, but simple enough to fix.
Unless I hear any major complaints I'll go this route shortly, for the 0.5
release this week.
> >Maybe a helper method might help here. Consider the following:-
> >
> >String xmlFragment = "<complexType mixed = 'true'> <sequence> <element
> >ref='xyz' /> </sequence> </complexType>";
> >Document document = DocumentHelper.parseText( xmlFragment )
> >
> >Then if you wanted to use the <complexType> element in some other
document
> >the following code could be used...
> >
> >String xmlFragment = "<complexType mixed = 'true'> <sequence> <element
> >ref='xyz' /> </sequence> </complexType>";
> >Document document = DocumentHelper.parseText( xmlFragment )
> >Element complexType = document.getRootElement();
> >complexType.detach();
> >someOtherElement.add( complexType );
>
> Lovely - the getRootElement() of a newly created doc is what I hadn't
> thought of. Would the fragment be created in NO_NAMESPACE, so that when
you
> add it to someOtherElement it inherits someOtherElement's namespace?
It would keep the same namespace thats declared in the XML text. If you
wanted to inherit the namespace from a different document then you could do
the following:-
Document document = DocumentHelper.parseText( xmlFragment );
Element complexType = document.getRootElement();
Element destination = ...;
QName qname = QName.get( "complexType", destination.getNamespace() );
Element newElement = someOtherElement.addElement( "complexType" );
newElement.appendAttributes( complexType );
newElement.appendContent( complexType );
Which will create a new element "complexType" in the same namespace as the
parent element.
> >I've added the DocumentHelper.parseText( xmlText ) helper method to the
> >current CVS image along with a JUnit test case to ensure it works
> >(org.dom4j.TestParseText). So you could try using the current CVS image
or a
> >daily build and see if this new method helps. (It is a pretty trivial
helper
> >method though).
>
> Thanks very much. I'm trying to avoid CVS access at present (need to
either
> use WinCVS in Unix-mode, or get Linux ISDN and proxy servers working) so
> I'll grab a snapshot in the next couple of days.
Cool. The daily build has all of these changes now. The 0.5 release should
be later this week.
James
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