location argument type


Description

One of: after, before, into, append, prepend, replace.

This argument is required by all commands that insert nodes to a document in some way to a destination described by an XPath expression. The meaning of the values listed above is supposed be obvious in most cases, however the exact semantics for location argument values depends on types of both the source node and the target node.

after/before place the node right after/before the destination node, except for when the destination node is a document node or one of the source nodes is an attribute: If the destination node is a document node, the source node is attached to the end/beginning of the document (remember: there is no "after/before a document"). If both the source and destination nodes are attributes, then the source node is simply attached to the element containing the destination node (remember: there is no order on attribute nodes). If the destination node is an attribute but the source node is of a different type, then the textual content of the source node is appended to the value of the destination attribute (i.e. in this case after/before act just as append/prepend).

append/prepend appends/prepends the source node to the destination node. If the destination node can contain other nodes (i.e. it is an element or a document node) then the entire source node is attached to it. In case of other destination node types, the textual content of the source node is appended/prepended to the content of the destination node.

into can also be used to place the source node to the end of an element (in the same way as append), to attach an attribute to an element, or, if the destination node is a text node, cdata section, processing-instruction, attribute or comment, to replace its textual content with the textual content of the source node.

replace replaces the entire destination node with the source node except for the case when the destination node is an attribute and the source node is not. In such a case only the value of the destination attribute is replaced with the textual content of the source node. Note also that document node can never be replaced.

Sections

Argument Types, Tree modification