Re: cloning nodes vs. creating new() ones

Very close.  The standard XMLC way to deal with adding multiple dynamic 
elements to the dom goes like this...

HTMLElement parentHook = xmlcObj.getElementParentHook();
HTMLElement templateRow = xmlcObj.getElementTemplateRow();
templateRow.removeAttribute("id");
Node clonedRow = null;
while (businessObject.hasMoreElements()) {
    xmlcObj.setTextProductName(businessObject.getProductName());
    clonedRow = templateRow.cloneNode(true);
    parentHook.appendChild(clonedRow);
}
parentHook.removeChild(templateRow);

The above implies that the templateRow (whatever element it is, be it a 
<td>, <li>, <option>, etc...) contains something like <span 
id="ProductName">dummy data</span>.  You keep on modifying data the 
XMLC-generated methods and clone the node.  After all that, you get rid of 
the original template row, leaving only the nodes you inserted containing 
real data.  Note that we remove the id attribute of the template row before 
doing any cloning since we don't want to have a bunch of cloned nodes with 
the same id.  This would result in invalid HTML/XHTML.

Hope that makes sense.  Note how the methodology above makes heavy use of 
template hooks using id's.  This makes the code more robust by have an 
absolute reference to particular elements which can be checked at compile 
time.  Counting on getFirstChild() and such to get to nodes that you assume 
to be there can fail if the template designer neglects to structure things 
as you expect or leaves certain things out that you assumed would be there.

Jake

At 11:03 AM 9/15/2003 -0700, you wrote:
> In my HTML I have a dropdown list with one teacher option.  I'm using 
> cloneNode() to create another <option> element and calling cloneNode() on 
> that teacher's <option> to create the text that goes <option>right 
> here</option>.  I'm using cloneNode() because I don't know how to go about 
> creating a new object that implements HTMLOptionElement.  Is the way I'm 
> doing this how its supposed to be done, by using the w3c API, or is there 
> a better way to instantiate new XMLC specific objects and add them to the 
> HTMLSelectElement?
>   Thanks,
>     -M@
>
>                 HTMLSelectElement teacherDropdown = 
> form.getElementTeacherDropdown();
>                 HTMLOptionElement teacher1 = form.getElementTeacherOption();
>                 HTMLOptionElement teacher2 = (HTMLOptionElement) 
> teacher1.cloneNode(false);
>
> teacher2.appendChild(teacher1.getFirstChild().cloneNode(false));
>                 teacher2.getFirstChild().setNodeValue("Mr. Snyde");
>                 teacher2.setValue("2");
>
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