Proposal

see irc raw log : http://www.w3.org/2008/02/04-forms-irc#T16-52-24, and irc minutes : http://www.w3.org/2008/02/04-forms-minutes.html

We will decided to create an action setcontent which does the same as setvalue but allows elements as child XML.

Using insert to insert inline specified xml

<xf:insert  ...>
  <xf:origin>
    <inline-created-element>element contents</inline-created-element>
  </xf:origin>
</xf:insert>

We will also add a simplified action for setting XML contents.

Adding static inline XML:

<xf:setcontent ref="my-el">
  <my-snippet>
    <sub-element>text</sub-element>
  </my-snippet>
</xf:setcontent>

Adding dynamic inline XML:

<xf:setcontent ref="my-el">
  <xf:element name="instance('i2')/name">
    <xf:attribute name="'static-attr-name'">static-value</xf:attribute>
    <xf:attribute name="'static-attr-name2'" value="instance('i2')/attr-value"/>
    <xf:attribute name="instance('i2')/attr-value">static-value</xf:attribute>
    <static-child>text</static-child>
  </xf:element>
</xf:setcontent>

The setcontent action should be smart enough, to only do a rebuild if the content are XML elements and not if it is just text contents

Erik's Notes

I am not a big fan of xf:setcontent: this can be easily done with a template instance for static content. It would be convenient for sure, but it tries too much to be yet another template language, and we already have enough of those: XSLT, XQuery. Another approach, as discussed, could be XPath functions. This could be done instead or in addition to the above.

Inserting an element by QName:

<xf:insert context="parent" origin="element('foo:bar')"/>

Inserting an attribute by QName:

<xf:insert context="parent" origin="attribute('foo:bar')"/>

Inserting an attribute by QName with non-empty value:

<xf:insert context="parent" origin="attribute('foo:bar', 'my-value')"/>

The benefit of this solution:

Simple: just add two functions, which look a bit like the XQuery element and attribute constructors
No need for a plethora of new actions and elements: xf:insert does the job, that's it
Super easy for implementors

Original Text

The insert action gives us the power to create new nodes based on a templated
given by origin.  But there is no way to create a new node when no origin template exists.

I want to be able to create a node, giving its parent, its type (element, attribute, text, etc.), it's QName, and optionally an initial string value.

<create ref="parent" nodetype="element" name="child">literal</create>

The value attribute could be added to provide an xpath for determining the literal.  

It can easily fail with no-op if the QName prefix is undefined in the context of the parent, if the nodetype cannot be created as a child of the parent, etc.

This is an ease of authoring action that combines a special kind of insert with setvalue.

Sets the rebuild, recalculate, revalidate, refresh flags.

Should dispatch xforms-insert on successful completion.

CategoryXFormsFutureFeatures