Copying namespaces in XQuery

Question

I'm trying to construct a new element based on an old one, including copying in its children. To prevent each child from repeating the namespace definitions for each namespace in scope, I'm interested in copying the namespace declarations as well.

Namespace declarations aren't picked up as regular attributes through $element/@*.

If I restrict my code to only work with XQuery 3.0, I can do the following:

<new-element>
  {
    for $ns-prefix in in-scope-prefixes($element)
    let $ns-uri := namespace-uri-for-prefix($ns-prefix, $element)
    return namespace { $ns-prefix } { $ns-uri }
  }
  ...
</new-element>

Is there a better way?

---

To clarify the problem a bit -- my original document looks like so:

<root xmlns:stuff="...">
  <child name="foo"/>
  <child name="bar"/>
</root>

When I copy children into a new document, I get the following:

<new-element>
  <child xmlns:stuff="..." name="foo"/>
  <child xmlns:stuff="..." name="bar"/>
</new-element>

...whereas it would make more sense to simply attach the xmlns:stuff declaration to <new-element>.

Answer 1

If you permit use of XQuery Update, you could use a transform expression (copy/modify/return) to copy the node, then modify the name.