[jdom-interest] elt.detach()

[Jason Hunter]

Hi,

I believe it would be useful to have an element.detach() method that
removes an  element from its parent (if there is a parent), and returns
the detached element afterward.  This simplifies the act of moving an
element to a new location from this right now:

if (kid.getParent() != null) {
  kid.getParent().removeContent(kid);
}
if (kid.getDocument() != null) {
  // see later discussion
}
newParent.addContent(kid);

to simply:

newParent.addContent(kid.detach())


The only tricky thing is what to do if the Element being "detached" is a
root element, as shown above.  Technically just removing a root elt from
its document makes the document no longer well-formed.  So perhaps we
could do something like oldDoc.setRootElement(new
Element("placeholder"))?

Ideas?

-jh-