IE7: How do I create a real NodeList?

I'm trying to make my current project IE7-compatible. We are not using jQuery, but instead using querySelectorAll for our selector needs. However, IE7 doesn't support querySelectorAll, so I've mon开发者_如何学运维key-patched it with code from https://gist.github.com/868532. It actually works fine, except for one small difference: instead of a NodeList like the original querySelectorAll, it returns an array. Since I'd like to stay as compatible as possible, I wanted to make that function return a NodeList. Using some method found on the net, I've adapted the gist to this:

(function(d) {
     d=document, a = d.styleSheets[0] || d.createStyleSheet();

     if (! vxJS.isHostMethod(d, 'querySelectorAll')) {
         d.querySelectorAll = function(e) {
             a.addRule(e,'f:b');

             for (var l=d.all, b=0, c=d.createDocumentFragment(),f=l.length; b<f; b++) {
                  l[b] && l[b].currentStyle.f && c.appendChild(l[b].cloneNode(true));
             }
             a.removeRule(a.rules.length - 1);
             return c.childNodes;
         };
     }
 })();

My problem with this code is that appendChild removes a node from its original location in DOM tree, therefore I tried creating a clone with cloneNode, which obviously creates valid node clones, which are not the original nodes and thus cannot be used in further code.

Is there any way I can put a real node reference into a NodeList?

I don't think that it can be done.

The NodeList instances which IE7 is able to produce are live NodeLists. However, the querySelectorAll method is defined to return a static NodeList instance. I don't believe that IE7 knows what a static NodeList is - those were (afaik) only introduced in the Selectors API.

Read about live NodeLists and static NodeLists here.

Perhaps you can make your Array mimicking NodeList by adding the item() method.

if (!Array.prototype.item) {
    Array.prototype.item = function (i) {
        "use strict";

        return this[i];
    };
}