Results of ColdFusion's XMLSearch functions are references
This post is more than 2 years old.
Just a quick note. I was talking with Stephen Moretti about working with the results of the XMLSearch function. He wanted to know if the results were references or copies of the XML data. I did a few tests and from what I see - they are references. Here is a quick example.
<cfdump var="#stuff#"> <cfset b = xmlSearch(stuff, "//product[@name='beta']")> <cfdump var="#b#"> <cfset test = b[1]> <cfset test.xmlchildren[1].xmltext =99> <cfset test.xmlattributes.name = "boo"> <cfdump var="#stuff#"><cfxml variable="stuff"> <products> <product name="alpha"> <price>10</price> </product> <product name="beta"> <price>11</price> </product> <product name="gamma"> <price>9</price> </product> </products> </cfxml>
I begin with a simple XML packet of products. Each product has a name and a price child. I do a search to find the Beta product. Once I've got it I manipulate the name and the price. Here are the results of the dumps:
Not sure how useful this is - I almost never actually update XML - but hopefully this will help others.
Archived Comments
ray,
in many use cases we can have an xml configuration/setup file, and often we have to change any of the items to change a behaviour, at runtime, so this post is very usefull.
Good to know :)
Please note that XMLSearch can also return simple values (I <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/dorin...">twitted</a> about this).
Ah nice - I ran into this once myself I think in an AIR application but forgot about it. :)