Is XSLT enough to update a local xml file?

spring2009 · May 19th, 2009, 03:46 PM

are you using HTA? HTA's don't have problem saving.

jastal · May 19th, 2009, 04:06 PM

I am embarrassed to say that I never heard of HTA before I saw this post. I have done a lot of work with xml and xslt but only from a read-only perspective. I am now in need of the ability to update my xml without going to a server and am trying to determine if this is possible. After finding this link I cut/pasted the example above and stumbled on to the permission error. I guess I am missing a piece and need to research HTA!

spring2009 · May 19th, 2009, 04:25 PM

Please read this thread from the start. that might be helpful.

jastal · May 19th, 2009, 05:09 PM

I reviewed the threads and realized that my problem was not using the .hta extension on my hta file! It saves fine now. Great to find such an easy fix. Thanks again

threecantos · May 19th, 2009, 09:35 PM

Organizations deal with numerous documents, such as word processor documents and PDFs. These documents often reside on someoneâs computer and are not network accessible. Versions of documents are hard to track â the same document may be passed around using email in multiple versions over time. In large organizations it therefore becomes important to structure the flow of documents and present them in a common format. This is typically done using a DMS (Document Management System) such as the Document Library.

mhkay · May 20th, 2009, 01:58 AM

>I get a permission denied error

Frankly, I was surprised by the reply that suggested you could write to local client-side filestore at all - I would have expected this error. Presumably it will work if the user sets their security policy in the browser to something sufficiently low - but I would never recommend a user to do that.

In any case, we're now way off the topic of XSLT.

jastal · May 20th, 2009, 08:24 AM

I have the updated my prototype to allow a user to revise the attributes of an existing xml structure. Does anyone know if its possible to all add and delete xml nodes using the same strategy of an hta file? I appreciate any help with this. The last piece of my prototype.

Martin Honnen · May 20th, 2009, 08:36 AM

With all the different participants in this thread it is hard to tell what "strategy" exactly you are talking about. The solution I posted in response to the original poster transformed XML to a HTML fragment with HTML form controls like input elements, where an XPath expression to the corresponding XML node was stored in the name attribute of the input element. Then event handlers of the input could then find the corresponding XML node using XPath and manipulate its content. If you wanted to remove a node instead you could do that with the MSXML DOM API e.g.

Code:

function removeNode(input)
{
  var node = doc.selectSingleNode(input.name);
  if (node != null)
  {
     node.parentNode.removeChild(node);
  }
}

jastal · May 20th, 2009, 08:46 AM

Thanks for the quick reply. Your example for removing a node seems straightforward and makes sense. I guess I am more concerned with adding a node since it is not already part of the xml. I am thinking this must be call like insertChildAfter() or appendChild(). If you can post an example I would appreciate it.

Martin Honnen · May 20th, 2009, 08:54 AM

MSXML implements the W3C DOM Level 1 Core/XML so yes, appendChild is a method to insert a node as a child of another node. See the MSXML SDK http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...42(VS.85).aspx for details on all methods. So you can create an element with createElement and insert it into another node with appendChild.
As for an example, we would first need to establish how you would identify the element name of the element to be created and the target node to which the new element should be appended.