yet another xml question (has child nodes?)

[churchill]

I know DP3 has functionality to return the child nodes of a given node, but I need a DP2 solution to checking whether a node has children or not. e.g. would xmlFindSubNode(node, "",0) return the first node that it came across regardless of what it was called?

Otherwise it means me re-working some code so that all the nodes are named something like "data" and then have the key as an attribute instead of the tag name, e.g instead of:

<data> 
     <someKey>value</someKey> 
</data> 

it would have to become:

<lotsOfData> 
     <data key="someKey">value</data> 
</lotsOfData> 

Which would make the script slower in other places, as I could no longer find the right node value simply using:

node = xmlFindSubNode(someXMLfile, "someKey", 0) 
if (node ~= false) then 
     nodevalue = xmlNodeGetValue(node) 
end 
  

I would have to do this instead, which will be a lot slower when using lots of data:

node = findNode(someXMLfile, "someKey") 
if (node ~= false) then 
     nodevalue = xmlNodeGetValue(node) 
end 
  
function findNode(parentnode, key) 
     i = 0 
     node = xmlFindSubNode(parentnode, "data", i) 
     while (node ~= false) do 
          nodeKey = xmlNodeGetAttribute(node, "key") 
          if (nodeKey == key) then 
               return node 
          end 
          i = i + 1 
          node = xmlFindSubNode (parentnode, "data", i) 
     end 
     return false 
end 

[[UVA]Bart]

if your removing the child like we talked on msn, why dont you replace it with something else, then on a timer every 10 mins do a check through the file to remove anything, for instance say the xml was like this

  
<data> 
        <players name="joebloggs" status="active"/> 
</data>  
  

you could change the status to something like

  
<data> 
        <players name="joebloggs" status="remove"/> 
</data>  
  

then loop through the xml every 10 mins or so finding players with remove there and then deleate that node

i think this is what you mean, if not sorry