ensureNamespace {XML}

Ensure that the node has a definition for particular XML namespaces

Description

This function is a helper function for use in creating XML content. We often want to create a node that will be part of a larger XML tree and use a particular namespace for that node name. Rather than defining the namespace in each new node, we want to ensure that it is define on an ancestor node. This function aids in that task. We call the function with the ancestor node or top-level document and have it check whether the namespace is already defined or have it add it to the node and return.

This is intended for use with XMLInternalNode objects which are direclty mutable (rather than changing a copy of the node and having to insert that back into the larger tree.)

Usage

ensureNamespace(doc, what)

Arguments

doc

an XMLInternalDocument or XMLInternalNode on which the namespace is to be defined. If this is a documentm, we use the root node.

what

a named character vector giving the URIs for the namespace definitions and the names giving the desired prefixes

Value

This is used for the potential side effects of modifying the XML node to add (some of) the namespaces as needed.

Author(s)

Duncan Temple Lang

References

XML namespaces

See Also

newXMLNamespace newXMLNode

Examples

  doc = newXMLDoc()
  top = newXMLNode("article", doc = doc)
  ensureNamespace(top, c(r = "http://www.r-project.org"))
  b = newXMLNode("r:code", parent = top)
  print(doc)