25123 - nsIDOMDocument::InsertBefore() can't be used to insert an element...

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, defect, P3)

Description

[jst]

AFAI can tell from reading the DOM spec it should be possible to insert an
element into a document with Document::InsertBefore() or Document::AppendChild()
as long as there is no root element in the document. This is currently not
possible due to some incorrect code in nsIDocument::InsertBefore(), it checks if
the new node is a comment or PI, if it's not then InsertBefore() fails.

The correct behaviour here is IMO to allow element nodes as long as there is
no root element in the document, and also inserting text nodes should be
possible as long as the text in the node is whitespace only.

Coding the above is trivial but the effects in layout are at least to mee
currently unknown. This requires some investigating.

Comment 1

[vidur (gone)]

The DOM spec doesn't allow creation of a document without a document element. 
EIther way, it is still possible using internal methods to create such a 
document. The suggestion seems reasonable and should apply to InsertBefore, 
AppendChild and ReplaceChild. Marking M16.

Comment 2

[Peter Van der Beken]

Any news on this? Right now, there's no way to construct a Document from 
scratch, as one can only append/insert ProcessingInstruction, Comment or 
DocumentType and these can't have children. This blocks us a bit for integration 
of Transformiix (XSLT processor) into Mozilla. I've thought about using 
nsDocument::SetRootContent(nsIContent* aRoot) for inserting a root element, but 
this seems a bit of a kludge.
I haven't found where the DOM spec doesn't allow creation of a document without 
a document element. Could you point me to that?

Comment 3

[Mike]

M16 has been out for a while now, these bugs target milestones need to be 
updated.

Comment 4

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

This was fixed by Vidur as a side effect of his XML extras work, marking FIXED.

Comment 5

[Jan Carpenter]

Mass update of qa contact

Comment 6

[Prashant Desale]

QA contact Update

Comment 7

[Prashant Desale]

Updating QA contact to Shivakiran Tummala.

Comment 8

[Sivakiran Tummala]

still fails and some of the bugs which were reported have been 
futhered..marking this bug as verified as using the other bugs as reference ...