build_xpath

This promise type assures that a balanced XML tree, described by the given XPath, will be present within the XML file. If the document is empty, the default promise is to build the XML tree within the document. If the document is not empty, the default promise is to verify the given XPath, and if necessary, locate an insertion node and build the necessary portion of XML tree within selected node. The insertion node is selected as the last unique node that is described by the XPath and also found within the document. The promise object referred to is a literal string representation of an XPath.

    bundle edit_xml example
    {
    build_xpath:
       "/Server/Service/Engine/Host";
    }

Note that typically, only a single XPath is built in each build_xpath promise. You may of course have multiple promises that each build an XPath. The supported syntax used in building an XPath is currently limited to a simple and compact format, as shown in the above example. The XPath must begin with '/', as it is verified and built using an absolute path, from the root node of the document.

The resulting document can then be further modified using insert_tree, set_text, set_attribute etc promises. Using predicate statements to set attributes or text values directly via build_xpath can lead to non-convergent behavior, and is discouraged.