writing XML from a string

[Gregory Freeland <gf...@jpg.com>]

I've been using Xerces-C DOM and have run into an issue when writing to an 
XML file.  Basically, to write the XML file, I build up a DOMDocument, 
adding nodes and such.  Once the document is complete, the DOMWriter is used 
to write the node to a file.  I have cases though, where I'll have a string 
containing XML characters, and several levels of descendant nodes. 
Essentially, I want to write the string directly to the file as a child 
node.

For example, the code snippet below will create a new DOM element, add an 
attribute, and add a child text node.  My problem occurs when the XMLCh* 
variable "content" is a string that looks something like this:

"<Child>Test Content</Child>"

the resulting XML file will have the XML format characters translated.

&lt;Child&gt;Test Content&lt;/Child&gt;

So is it possible to write the above XML string as a Text node, while 
retaining the XML formatting?

Thanks in advance,
Greg

//////Begin source code

 //first, create a new dataitem element
 DOMElement* dataitemElem = m_DOMDocument->createElement( 
X("Construction") );
 //create and set the type attribute
 dataitemElem->setAttribute(X("Type"), type);

 //create a child text node of the new dataitem element
 DOMText* dataitemElemVal = m_DOMDocument->createTextNode(content);
 dataitemElem->appendChild((DOMNode*)dataitemElemVal);

 //append the new child element to the root element
 DOMElement* rootElem = m_DOMDocument->getDocumentElement();
 rootElem->appendChild(dataitemsElem);

///////End source code
-- 

Re: writing XML from a string

[David Bertoni <db...@apache.org>]

Gregory Freeland wrote:
> I've been using Xerces-C DOM and have run into an issue when writing to 
> an XML file.  Basically, to write the XML file, I build up a 
> DOMDocument, adding nodes and such.  Once the document is complete, the 
> DOMWriter is used to write the node to a file.  I have cases though, 
> where I'll have a string containing XML characters, and several levels 
> of descendant nodes. Essentially, I want to write the string directly to 
> the file as a child node.
> 
> For example, the code snippet below will create a new DOM element, add 
> an attribute, and add a child text node.  My problem occurs when the 
> XMLCh* variable "content" is a string that looks something like this:
> 
> "<Child>Test Content</Child>"
> 
> the resulting XML file will have the XML format characters translated.
> 
> &lt;Child&gt;Test Content&lt;/Child&gt;
> 
> So is it possible to write the above XML string as a Text node, while 
> retaining the XML formatting?
> 

You are confusing content with markup/structure.  If you want to 
serialize markup, create structure (elements and text nodes), not a 
single text node.

You could also hack the serializer code, but then you are essentially 
breaking the code to match your model, which is inherently broken.

Dave