Use Javascript E4X to selectively rename XML tags

Question

I am using javascript to manipulate XML in a non-browser context (no DOM), and am looking for an E4X expression to rename a list of tags. For any given tag, I don't necessarily know ahead of time what it is called, and I only want to rename it if it contains a given substring.

As I very contrived example, I may have:

someXML = <Favourites>
              <JillFaveColour>Blue</JillFaveColour>
              <JillFaveCandy>Smarties</JillFaveCandy>
              <JillFaveFlower>Rose</JillFaveFlower>
          <Favourites>

and I want to turn the XML into:

<Favourites>
    <GaryFaveColour>Blue</GaryFaveColour>
    <GaryFaveCandy>Smarties</GaryFaveCandy>
    <GaryFaveFlower>Rose</GaryFaveFlower>
<Favourites>

However, there may be more tags or fewer tags, and I won't know ahead of time what their full name is. I only rename them if they contain a given substring (in my example, the substring is "Jill").

Answer 1

For renaming elements, use setLocalName(newName). For your "I don't know all the tag names in advance" problem, just iterate over the elements and call their localName() methods (if node.length() === 1 && node.nodeKind() === "element") to get their tag names.

Answer 2

Something like:

var children= someXML.children();
for (var i= children.length; i-->0;)
    if (children[i].nodeKind()==='element')
        element.setLocalName(element.localName().split('Jill').join('Gary'));

Answer 3

Consider adding then deleting those nodes manually?

//msg is your xml object
msg['Favorites']['GaryFaveColor'] = msg['Favorites']['JillFaveColour'];
msg['Favorites']['GaryFaveCandy'] = msg['Favorites']['JillFaveCandy'];
msg['Favorites']['GaryFaveFlower'] = msg['Favorites']['JillFaveFlower'];

//now del Jill
delete msg['Favorites']['JillFaveColour'];
delete msg['Favorites']['JillFaveCandy'];
delete msg['Favorites']['JillFaveFlower'];