CDATA and XML structure

Question

Hej!
I am trying to but an entire XML structure into a CDATA-tag. But have not been successful.
Im using Xquery and trying to somthing like this:
I have an variable $example which contains a XML structure. For example:
$example = <elementA><A1>valueA1</A1><A2><A2a>text2a</A2a><A2b>text2b</A2b></A2><A3>valueA3</A3></elementA>
I want to something like this <![CDATA[$example]]> to be expanded to <![CDATA[<elementA><A1>valueA1</A1><A2><A2a>text2a</A2a><A2b>text2b</A2b></A2><A3>valueA3</A3></elementA>]]>
I have tried in many ways (eg by doing concat("<![CDATA[", $example, "]]>") ) and ended up with a CDATA tag that contains only the value of the elements in the tags of A1, A2 and A3. for example the CDATA that is created looks something like this:
<![CDATA[valueA1text2atext2bvalueA3]]>
instead of
<![CDATA[<elementA><A1>valueA1</A1><A2><A2a>text2a</A2a><A2b>text2b</A2b></A2><A3>valueA3</A3</elementA>]]>
I would really be grateful for any suggestions or tips and pointers on how to solve this.
Best Regards
Ninib
Edited by: NinibEDB on 2010-nov-09 17:35

Answer 1

Hi,
Which XQuery processor are you using?
According to the W3C specifications, the output of CDATA section is part of the serialization process, not the XQuery evaluation. So it's up to the implementor to provide the necessary options.
The option we need here is the "cdata-section-elements" parameter :
http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-xquery-serialization/#XML_CDATA-SECTION-ELEMENTS
For example, using the Saxon XQuery processor :
declare option saxon:output "omit-xml-declaration=yes";
declare option saxon:output "cdata-section-elements=test";
let $example := "<elementA><A1>valueA1</A1><A2><A2a>text2a</A2a><A2b>text2b</A2b></A2><A3>valueA3</A3></elementA>"
return <test>{$example}</test>which gives :
<test><![CDATA[<elementA><A1>valueA1</A1><A2><A2a>text2a</A2a><A2b>text2b</A2b></A2><A3>valueA3</A3></elementA>]]></test>