Add XML contained in string as XML nodes to existing pugixml tree - c++

Question

I have a configuration file saver/loader. In addition to the expected data, there is a <CustomData> node. When saving the node, we'd simply have a std::string _customData and add it to the node, like this:
pugi::xml_document doc;
pugi::xml_node config = doc.append_child("OurConfig");
// save custom data
pugi::xml_node customData = config.append_child("CustomData");
customData.append_child(pugi::node_pcdata).set_value(_customData);
Our _customData was base64 encoded XML. It is provided from another part of the application. It must be a string, since the other part of the application uses different programming language (C#). As you can imagine, that became annoying, because it wasn't human readable. First step to fix this was simply to get rid of base64 in the app that provides _customData. So now we have readable version, which looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<OurConfig>
<CustomData><CfgRoot>
<SomeValue name="External setting for foo" value="Foo"/>
<SomeValue name="External setting for bar" value="Bar"/>
</CfgRoot></CustomData>
</OurConfig>
But it could probably improve if the custom data was directly appended to XML tree instead of as string value. How can I append XML string as XML and not as string to pugixml tree?
Ie. the output I'd like:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<OurConfig>
<CustomData>
<CfgRoot>
<SomeValue name="External setting for foo" value="Foo"/>
<SomeValue name="External setting for bar" value="Bar"/>
</CfgRoot>
</CustomData>
</OurConfig>

Answer 1

In the docs, there are three methods listed. I used the first one, making a convenience function like this:
bool AppendXMLString(pugi::xml_node target, const std::string& srcString)
{
// parse XML string as document
pugi::xml_document doc;
if (!doc.load_buffer(srcString.c_str(), srcString.length()))
return false;
for (pugi::xml_node child = doc.first_child(); child; child = child.next_sibling())
target.append_copy(child);
return true;
}