Is it possible to add variable defined as xmltype to an xmldom node?

Question

Hi,
I'm trying to produce a complex XML document that doesn't lend itself well to using SQL XML functions (xmlagg, xmlelement, etc.) because various disparate data needs to be pulled together via seperate queries and then stuck into the final document in the correct spots.
So I've resorted to using the convoluted pl/sql xmldom functions. What I'm wondering though is if it is possible to take data in an xmltype variable and somehow append it as a node within my xml document? Something as in the following pseudo code:
begin
doc := xmldom.newDOMDocument;
main_node := xmldom.makeNode (doc);
select xmlelement("Address",...) -- more xmlelements containing related address info (street, city, etc.)
into l_address
from ...;
new_node := xmldom.appendChild (main_node, xmldom.makeNode (l_address));
end;
If possible, this would save me a tremendous amount of time from having to code every element and attributes via the xmldom functions.
Thanks,
Alan

Answer 1

I've done the same scenario you are describing, shove XML defined in an XMLType into a DOMDocument. I munged the code to hide system specific references so the code works, just not as pasted here. The document is being built in o_response_doc and goes after the node previously built in l_rsp_msg_nd. The input is l_xmltype. May be a better way but I never found one and came up with this based on the Oracle documentation and trial and error.
    -- Convert the XMLType to a DOMDocument so we can extract the needed node
    --  and insert it into the response DOMDocument
    l_temp_domdoc := dbms_xmldom.newdomdocument(l_xmltype);
    l_inq_nodelist := dbms_xmldom.getelementsbytagname(l_temp_domdoc,
                                                       'DesiredXMLTypeNodeName');
    l_inq_nl_len := xmldom.getlength(l_inq_nodelist);
    IF l_inq_nl_len > 0 THEN
       -- Take the node above and adopt it into the response document
       l_temp2_nd := dbms_xmldom.importNode(o_response_doc,
                                            dbms_xmldom.item(l_inq_nodelist, 0),
                                            TRUE);
       -- Remove the a: namespace that was autoadded.  (this was defined in the l_xmltype XML)
       dbms_xmldom.removeattribute(dbms_xmldom.makeelement(l_temp2_nd),
                                   <ns_pfx>,
                                   <ns_uri>);
       -- Put the node in the correct position in the response document                                          
       l_temp2_nd := xdb.dbms_xmldom.appendChild(l_rsp_msg_nd, l_temp2_nd);
    END IF;
    dbms_xmldom.freeDocument(l_temp_domdoc);