The function modifies the XML document of the given source XML tree entity by adding new siblings to the node specified by the entity. Siblings will be added right before the node. The source entity should be XML tree entity, not "persistent XML" entity. The value of source should be a node entity; source can not be an attribute entity or a root entity.
The values passed in parameters insertion1... insertionN will be converted into XML nodes according to rules described in section Composing Document Fragments From DOM Function Arguments.
After calling the function, parameter source is still a valid XML entity that points to the same node. The value passed as source can be used in the rest of caller procedure.
The function returns NULL.
The sample procedure contains two calls of XMLInsertBefore. First call insert two new element nodes just before the given node; second call demonstrates how text nodes can be merged.
create procedure XMLInsertBefore_demo() { declare DESCRIPTION varchar (40); declare ENTITY, ent any; result_names (DESCRIPTION, ENTITY); result ('EXAMPLE1', 'Plain inserting of some children'); ent := xpath_eval ('//child0', xtree_doc ('<a><child0></child0></a>')); result ('The document to modify', xpath_eval ('/', ent)); result ('The place of insertion', ent); XMLInsertBefore (ent, xtree_doc ('<child1/>'), xtree_doc ('<child2/>')); result ('The changed document', xpath_eval ('/', ent)); result ('The original node is updated', ent); result ('EXAMPLE2', 'Insertion that cause concatenation of text nodes'); ent := xpath_eval ('//b/text()', xtree_doc ('<a><b>world!</b></a>')); result ('The document to modify', xpath_eval ('/', ent)); result ('The place of insertion', ent); XMLInsertBefore (ent, 'Hello, '); result ('The changed document', xpath_eval ('/', ent)); result ('The original node is updated', ent); } Done. -- 00000 msec. XMLInsertBefore_demo() DESCRIPTION ENTITY VARCHAR VARCHAR _______________________________________________________________________________ EXAMPLE1 Plain inserting of some children The document to modify <a><child0 /></a> The place of insertion <child0 /> The changed document <a><child1 /><child2 /><child0 /></a> The original node is updated <child0 /> EXAMPLE2 Insertion that cause concatenation of text nodes The document to modify <a><b>world!</b></a> The place of insertion world! The changed document <a><b>Hello, world!</b></a> The original node is updated Hello, world! 10 Rows. -- 00000 msec.