xml » insertBefore(xml,xpath,content,var)

Description

This command search against specified xml via xpath, and insert content before all matching instances. The final (modified) XML is then stored in a data variable specified as var.
If specified xpath refers to attribute of xml, Nexial will insert new attribute specified via content for all matching instances. content must be in key=value pair for this. If value is missing, Nexial will create attribute with empty value.

Note:

• Nexial doesn’t support inserting multiple attributes at the same time.

A few things to consider when modifying (append, prepend or replace) XML. Since,

• xpath may resolve to a XML node (as in <node>...</node>) or an attribute (as in <node attribute="...">...),
• content may be text or a well-formed XML snippet.

Therefore,

1. If content is simply text (as in text content) and specified xpath resolves to one or more XML nodes, then the text content of such nodes will be impacted (i.e. appended, prepended or replaced).
2. If content is a well-formed XML snippet and specified xpath resolves to one or more XML nodes, then the specified content will be converted into XML to affect (i.e. append, prepend or replace) those matching nodes.
3. If the specified xpath resolves to one or more XML attributes, then content will be used as attribute values to append, prepend or replace (depending on the command used) existing attribute values.

Parameters

• xml - the XML document or file
• xpath - the XPATH to specify the target area of impact
• content - the content to insert before, may be text content, attribute value or well formed XML snippet
• var - the variable name to store the beautified content.

Example

Script:

Output:

See Also

• append(xml,xpath,content,var)
• clear(xml,xpath,var)
• delete(xml,xpath,var)
• insertAfter(xml,xpath,content,var)
• prepend(xml,xpath,content,var)
• replace(xml,xpath,content,var)
• replaceIn(xml,xpath,content,var)