How do you add a brand new attribute to a node in an OpenLaszlo XML dataset?
The way to do this is to use the lz.datapointer.setNodeAttribute() function. If you use the setNodeAttribute() function with an attribute name that does not already appear on the node, a new one will be created.
In the sample OpenLaszlo application below, if you press the button titled [displayXML] after you compile the program, you will see the XML dataset before any changes are made does not contain any "fav_saying" attribute.
After you click the [updateAttribute] button to add the favorite saying for Homer via the setNodeAttribute() method, you can then click the [displayXML] button again and you will see that an attribute called 'fav_saying' has been added to the XML dataset.
<canvas height="665" width="1000" layout="axis: x" debug="true">
<dataset name="myData">
<myXML>
<person firstname="Homer" lastname="Simpson" />
<person firstname="Marge" lastname="Simpson" />
<person firstname="Montgomery" lastname="Burns" />
</myXML>
</dataset>
<button text="displayXML">
<handler name="onclick">
Debug.write(canvas.myData.serialize());
</handler>
</button>
<button text="updateAttribute">
<handler name="onclick">
var dp = canvas.myData.getPointer(); // get datapointer to XML data
dp.setXPath('myXML/person[@firstname="Homer"]'); // set xpath to Homer Simpson
dp.setNodeAttribute('fav_saying', 'DOH!');
</handler>
</button>
</canvas>
You will also see that multiple calls to setNodeAttribute() will not add additional 'fav_saying' attributes. If the program used a different value for the saying every time then the value in the 'fav_saying' attribute would change but there would still only be one 'fav_saying' attribute.