create element at location defined by xpath

[richlm]

I use node.SelectNode(...) to locate a particular element/attribute in my
document.

If it doesn't exist I get a null reference.
Is there a simple way to create the "missing" element/attribute defined by
my (arbitrary) xpath expression?

I can imagine doing this by string-parse of my xpath expression to find out
what I need to create, but hoping there might be an easier way...

[Oleg Tkachenko [MVP]]

richlm wrote:

I use node.SelectNode(...) to locate a particular element/attribute in my
document.

If it doesn't exist I get a null reference.
Is there a simple way to create the "missing" element/attribute defined by
my (arbitrary) xpath expression?

Arbitrary XPath expression? What about "//bar" or
"/foo//bar[ancestor::baz='bah']" - where new bar element should be created?

--
Oleg Tkachenko [XML MVP, MCAD]
http://www.xmllab.net
http://blog.tkachenko.com

[richlm]

OK - perhaps not that arbitrary.

But it's still possible to imagine such a function would be useful, provided
the xpath expression is unambiguous, right?

Guess I'll just have to parse away the last bit(s) of the xpath expression
until I find a node then go forwards from there.

[Oleg Tkachenko [MVP]]

richlm wrote:

But it's still possible to imagine such a function would be useful, provided
the xpath expression is unambiguous, right?

Guess I'll just have to parse away the last bit(s) of the xpath expression
until I find a node then go forwards from there.

Yes, it should be useful function, but I never heard of any available
implementation. Yeah, just tokenize XPath expression by / and walk XML
tree one by one creating elements when necessary.

--
Oleg Tkachenko [XML MVP, MCAD]
http://www.xmllab.net
http://blog.tkachenko.com