xmlwrite : Attributes are alphabetically sorted

Hi

Does the xmlwrite() function use some sort of a sorting algorithm? When I execute the following code:

            entry_node = docNode.createElement('myelement');
            entry_node.setAttribute('name', myStruct.name);
            entry_node.setAttribute('value', myStruct.value);
            entry_node.setAttribute('unit', myStruct.unit);
            docNode.getDocumentElement.appendChild(entry_node);

I get an XML file as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mySpec>
   <myelement name="myName" unit="myUnit" value="myValue"/>
</mySpec>

What I need is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mySpec>
   <myelement name="myName" value="myValue" unit="myUnit"/>
</mySpec>

Is there anyway to suppress the sorting algorithm(if any exists)?

Thanks in advance.

Regards, Vamsi

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

What I need is ...:

Then what you need is not xml. A compliant xml writer is explicitly allowed to order tags and attributes as it sees fit and a compliant xml reader is explicitly forbidden to rely on the ordering of tags and attributes. If your code relies on the order of the attributes, it does not follow the xml standard and will be broken by many xml writers.

Matlab delegate the xml writing to Java, so it is very likely that all writers based on Java will show the same behaviour.

[Vamsinag Gunti]

Hi Guillaume,

Thank you for pointing out the error. Turns out that the format I wanted to generate was indeed wrong.