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RE: DOM (level 1): moving elements from one document to another

• From: Mike.Champion@S...
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 09:48:12 -0400

-----Original Message-----
From:   David Valera [SMTP:dvalera@p...]
Sent:   Wednesday, October 11, 2000 9:10 AM
To:     'Julian Reschke'; 'XML-Dev'
Subject:        RE: DOM (level 1): moving elements from one document to another

>If i understand corerectly, you should be using clonenode and then
>appendchild, otherwise you have the problem of two different documents
>pointing to the same node...you dont want that...

The problem is that a DOM node has an ownerDocument property associated with it.  That's why
the "factory" methods are on the Document interface.  cloneNode clones a subtree within the
same Document, so its nodes can't (at least as the spec is written) be associated with another
Document. The only way in Level 1 to move nodes from one Document to another is to create the
destination nodes in the context of the destination Document via its factory methods. 

Since the DOM working group became aware of how tedious it is to work around this situation, the
importNode method was added in Level 2 to automate the process of moving Nodes from one Document to
another.  Check to see if your DOM implementation supports Level 2; some already do, although the spec is
not *quite* a Recommendation yet.

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