Description Konstantin Komissarchik 2011-12-07 12:29:27 EST

When an element is created via XML editor DOM, we get something like this:

<root>
  <foo></foo>
</root>

Executing the same DOM API call against Apache DOM implementations yields the following text:

<root>
  <foo/>
</root>

Here is the DOM calls in question:

Element element = document.createElementNS( null, "foo" );
parent.insertBefore( element, refChild );

I don't believe DOM spec spells out which of this form is correct given the above API calls nor do I see any API in DOM to let one specify or change the form that is used.

This is particularly a problem for frameworks like Sapphire, where XML sits beneath something like form UI and users aren't typically editing XML source directly. We've heard multiple complaints from Sapphire adopters regarding this behavior. It is particular problematic for the following two cases:

1. Elements that only have attributes.
2. Marker elements (no attributes or content).

Users object to the editor producing empty content elements in this case.

It seems to me that XML editor DOM could follow Apache here and create self-closing element initially and only add separate closing tag when content is added.