Maintain attribute order in XML with a structure?

Question

I'm using xmlParse() to read an XML file into a structure, and then process the structure (replace some of the XML attributes) and then write the structure back out as an XML file. The problem is that I loose the original ordering of XML attrbutes when I convert to a structure, and instead end up with a new attribute order for each element that is alphabetical.
In otherwords: <element c="text" d="text" a="text" />
gets rewritten as: <element a="text" c="text" d="text" />
which is a problem for this application.
Is there a way to work with XML in CF but maintain attribute ordering (LinkedHashMap instead of a structure, maybe)?
Thanks.
Walter

Answer 1

but using ColdFusion to process XML in this way is making a pretty big change in the XML structure.
No, it's not changing the structure in any meaningful way: the attribute ordering isn't meaningful in XML, so if the order of them changes, then that's not a meaningful change.  In any way that XML should be used, it doesn't matter.
When CF reads an string (like file contents) and parses it as XML, it needs to create an XML object; that XML object will adhere to the rules of XML; one of which is "atribute order has no significance", so it will not (and ought not) bother to "remember" the order that the attributes were in in the original string.  When one converts that object back into a string, some sort of ordering needs to be used to write them back, and CF seems to arbitrarily use alphabetical order.  But it cannot refer back to information that it doesn't have (the original ordering), so the original ordering can't be preserved.
There's nothing unreasonable or that shouldn't be expected in this process, unfortunately (for you, I mean).
Adam