[prog] perl XML::LibXML

Tue Feb 15 00:49:44 EST 2005

Hi guys,

I've just started playing around with XML::LibXML and I think I'm missing 
something fairly fundamental. I'm trying to create a <div> and insert it 
into an XHTML tree. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong or suggest a 
tutorial, the perldocs left me baffled.

#make new node
  $div_node = XML::LibXML::Element->new('div');
  $div_node->setAttribute('id',$params->{id});

#pull out the reference nodes based on id's given as args
 my @before_node=$body->findnodes('//*[@id="'."$params->{before}".'"]')
 	    if $params->{before};
 my @after_node=$body->findnodes('//*[@id="'."$params->{after}".'"]')
 	    if $params->{after};

#if we've been told where to put it, put it there
 if (@after_node)
 {
     $body->insertAfter($div_node, $after_node[0]);
 }
 elsif (@before_node)
 {
     $body->insertBefore($div_node, $before_node[0]);
 }
#otherwise, stick it at the end of the <body>
 else
 {
     $body->appendChild($div_node);
 }

The appendChild call works fine, but the insertBefore and insertAfter
don't. I don't get any errors, it just doesn't insert anything. As far as
I can tell div_node, body, before_node and after_node contain what I think
they should contain. 

If I change it to something like

$body->insertBefore($div_node, $body->firstChild) 
then the new div gets inserted after the first child of body. Why does 
this work but not if I use a ref node?

What am I missing?

Many thanks!

Cxx