Create a copy of an internal XML document or node

These methods allow the caller to create a copy of an XML internal node. This is useful, for example, if we want to use the node or document in an additional context, e.g. put the node into another document while leaving it in the existing document. Similarly, if we want to remove nodes to simplify processing, we probably want to copy it so that the changes are not reflected in the original document.

At present, the newly created object is not garbage collected.

Usage

xmlClone(node, recursive = TRUE, addFinalizer = FALSE, ...)

Arguments

node

the object to be cloned

recursive

a logical value indicating whether the entire object and all its descendants should be duplicated/cloned (TRUE) or just the top-level object (FALSE)

addFinalizer

typically a logical value indicating whether to bring this new object under R's regular garbage collection. This can also be a reference to a C routine which is to be used as the finalizer. See getNativeSymbolInfo.

...

additional parameters for methods

Value

A new R object representing the object.

References

libxml2

Author

Duncan Temple Lang

Examples

doc =
xmlParse(paste0('<doc><author id="dtl"><firstname>Duncan</firstname>',
               '<surname>Temple Lang</surname></author></doc>'))

  au = xmlRoot(doc)[[1]]
     # make a copy
  other = xmlClone(au)
     # change it slightly
  xmlAttrs(other) = c(id = "dtl2")
     # add it to the children
  addChildren(xmlRoot(doc), other)
#> <doc>
#>   <author id="dtl">
#>     <firstname>Duncan</firstname>
#>     <surname>Temple Lang</surname>
#>   </author>
#>   <author id="dtl2">
#>     <firstname>Duncan</firstname>
#>     <surname>Temple Lang</surname>
#>   </author>
#> </doc>