text: I need to create an XML Document with an element that requires the attribute i:nil=true. I've tried <cfset StructInsert(mydoc.employee.name.XmlAttributes, "i:nil", "true")>, but it returns the error "The right hand side of the assignment is not of type XML Node".
  What I want is to create an element like this: <name i:
  Any help would be greatly appreciated.
  What does this produce?
  <cfdump var="#isStruct( mydoc.employee.name.xmlAttributes )#" />
  If it's Yes/True, I think the problem here has to do with you attempting to set a key with a value that is not permitted. Variables cannot have special characters like ':' in them. To quickly test this, change 'i:nil' to 'i_nil' since underscores are permitted.
  The xmlAttributes() method returns back a structure of key/value pairs.
  Is it valid for an XML node to look like:
  <user lastname="smith" firstname="john" i: ?
  Not sure that's allowed.
  If you're attempting to use namespaces, those are placed onto the root element <user> not its attributes. Like:
  <i:user
  Figured this out thank to Stackoverflow. Simply use a direct assignment.
  <cfset mydoc.employee.name.xmlAttributes["i:nil"] = true>
  Happy you got it rolling, but I gotta say I'm very surprised here.
  To my knowledge the xmlAttributes() function returns a structure, which is just a series of name/value pairs. I guess I'm so used to keeping special characters outside of my variable names that I never really tried to set one with a colon in it. Come to think of it, I think CF is more concerned about the FIRST character of the variable name than subsequent ones. Like, the variable couldn't be called ':nil', because it began with the colon, but the colon could exist as a subsequent character in the variable name.
  Good to know.