Re: Node creation functions

John,

Thank you for reading this and giving your comments.

For use cases. I use those functions most when I need to set an attribute or need to insert an element of which I only have the 'template/structure' at design time because the actual values of the attributes and element text content are known at run time. Both these cases could be done in XForms 1.1 but require you to do extra set value actions after inserting the attribute/element. Being able to write the XML fragment inline makes the form much more readable in a lot of cases and makes the form less complex because you need less actions to fulfill the job (definitely when you are inserting multiple nodes at once).

1) it would be good for the examples to show the serialization of the nodes created by the example function calls
I added this to the wiki
2) more text is needed to indicate what happens, if anything, in invalid scenarios, e.g. what if the qname contains an undefined namespace prefix?
Will add some text for that (the undefined namespace prefix case is already covered by XPath expressions in XForms section, but I will repeat it here and also say something about invalid qnames in general)
3) More text needed to describe how the created nodes connect to the rest of the machinery of XML.  For example, is the example given really intended to assign an ID to an attribute?  Will subsequent calls to id() return the node?  Can ID-ness be attached by adding an xsi:type attribute to an element being created?  Does attribute creation include the ability to create namespace declarations?
What happens when you clone a node with an insert action and update the id/xsi:type attribute? Same should happen here
4) Provide a real example where the attribute() function must be called independently of the element() function, such as inserting an attribute.
I will add that example

Kind regards,

Nick Van den Bleeken
R&D Manager

Phone: +32 3 821 01 70
Office fax: +32 3 821 01 71
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On 01 Nov 2011, at 19:58, John Boyer wrote:

We have a wiki page:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/wiki/Node_Creation_XPath_Functions

This indicates the functions are "already in Orbeon".  OK, why?

A too-technical answer is "it would be nice to create elements/attributes not expressed beforehand in an instance", but I'm asking what are the use cases for the element() and attribute() functions?

For example, one could say "I was trying to write a form that would be an XML editor and so I need to be able to create nodes whose names are defined by a user, not by a form author who wrote an instance."  Question: Was this the use case, or are there any others?

Going a bit further, we now have a version of spec-ready text:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/wiki/XPath_Expressions_Module#Node_creation_Functions

Feedback:
1) it would be good for the examples to show the serialization of the nodes created by the example function calls
2) more text is needed to indicate what happens, if anything, in invalid scenarios, e.g. what if the qname contains an undefined namespace prefix?
3) More text needed to describe how the created nodes connect to the rest of the machinery of XML.  For example, is the example given really intended to assign an ID to an attribute?  Will subsequent calls to id() return the node?  Can ID-ness be attached by adding an xsi:type attribute to an element being created?  Does attribute creation include the ability to create namespace declarations?
4) Provide a real example where the attribute() function must be called independently of the element() function, such as inserting an attribute.

Thanks,
John M. Boyer, Ph.D.
Distinguished Engineer, IBM Forms and Smarter Web Applications
IBM Canada Software Lab, Victoria
E-Mail: boyerj@ca.ibm.com<mailto:boyerj@ca.ibm.com>

Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/JohnBoyer
Blog RSS feed: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/rss/JohnBoyer?flavor=rssdw


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