Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Specification
Version 1.0
W3C Working Draft 23 September, 1999
This version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-DOM-Level-2-19990923
(PostScript file, PDF file, plain text, ZIP file)
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-DOM-Level-2
Previous versions:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-DOM-Level-2-9990719
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-DOM-Level-2-9990304
Editors:
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc., chair
Arnaud Le Hors, W3C, staff contact
Vidur Apparao, Netscape Communications Corporation
Laurence Cable, Sun
Mike Champion, Arbortext and Software AG
Joe Kesselman, IBM
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C
Tom Pixley, Netscape Communications Corporation
Jonathan Robie, Texcel Research and Software AG
Peter Sharpe, SoftQuad Software Inc.
Chris Wilson, Microsoft
Copyright © 1999 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C
liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status of this document
This is a W3C Working Draft for review by W3C members and other interested
parties. With the publication of this draft, the DOM Level 2 specification
enters last call. The last call period will end on October 8, 1999. Comments
on this document are invited and are to be sent to the public mailing list
www-dom@w3.org. An archive is available at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom/.
Comments received during the last call period will be addressed by the
Working Group which will then release an updated draft. Comments from
implementors will then be awaited and will determine whether this
specification can be submitted for Proposed Recommendation.
While this document is in last call, it is still a draft document which may
be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is
therefore inappropriate to use it as reference material or to cite it as
other than "work in progress". This is work in progress and does not imply
endorsement by, or the consensus of, either W3C or members of the DOM
Working Group.
This document has been produced as part of the W3C DOM Activity. The authors
of this document are the DOM WG members. Different modules of the Document
Object Model have different editors.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract
This specification defines the Document Object Model Level 2, a platform-
and language-neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to
dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents.
The Document Object Model Level 2 builds on the Document Object Model Level
1.
The DOM Level 2 is made of a set of core interfaces to create and manipulate
the structure and contents of a document and a set of optional modules.
These modules contain specialized interfaces dedicated to XML, HTML, an
abstract view, generic stylesheets, Cascading Style Sheets, Events,
traversing the document structure, and a Range object.
Table of contents
* Expanded Table of Contents
* Copyright Notice
* What is the Document Object Model?
* Chapter 1: Document Object Model Core
* Chapter 2: Document Object Model HTML
* Chapter 3: Document Object Model Views
* Chapter 4: Document Object Model StyleSheets
* Chapter 5: Document Object Model CSS
* Chapter 6: Document Object Model Events
* Chapter 7: Document Object Model Traversal
* Chapter 8: Document Object Model Range
* Appendix A: Changes
* Appendix B: IDL Definitions
* Appendix C: Java Language Binding
* Appendix D: ECMA Script Language Binding
* Acknowledgments
* Glossary
* References
* Objects Index
* Index
Expanded Table of Contents
* Expanded Table of Contents
* Copyright Notice
* What is the Document Object Model?
o Introduction
o What the Document Object Model is
o What the Document Object Model is not
o Where the Document Object Model came from
o Entities and the DOM Core
o Compliance
o DOM Interfaces and DOM Implementations
* Chapter 1: Document Object Model Core
o 1.1. Overview of the DOM Core Interfaces
+ 1.1.1. The DOM Structure Model
+ 1.1.2. Memory Management
+ 1.1.3. Naming Conventions
+ 1.1.4. Inheritance vs Flattened Views of the API
+ 1.1.5. The DOMString type
+ 1.1.6. Case sensitivity in the DOM
+ 1.1.7. XML Namespaces
o 1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
o 1.3. Extended Interfaces
* Chapter 2: Document Object Model HTML
o 2.1. Introduction
o 2.2. HTML Application of Core DOM
+ 2.2.1. Naming Conventions
o 2.3. Miscellaneous Object Definitions
o 2.4. Objects related to HTML documents
o 2.5. HTML Elements
+ 2.5.1. Property Attributes
+ 2.5.2. Naming Exceptions
+ 2.5.3. Exposing Element Type Names (tagName)
+ 2.5.4. The HTMLElement interface
+ 2.5.5. Object definitions
* Chapter 3: Document Object Model Views
o 3.1. Introduction
o 3.2. Interfaces
* Chapter 4: Document Object Model StyleSheets
o 4.1. Introduction
o 4.2. Style Sheet Interfaces
o 4.3. Document Extensions
o 4.4. Association between a style sheet and a document.
* Chapter 5: Document Object Model CSS
o 5.1. Overview of the DOM Level 2 CSS Interfaces
o 5.2. CSS Fundamental Interfaces
+ 5.2.1. Override and computed style sheet
+ 5.2.2. Style sheet creation
o 5.3. CSS Extended Interfaces
o 5.4. HTML Extension
+ 5.4.1. HTMLElement inline style
o 5.5. Unresolved Issues
* Chapter 6: Document Object Model Events
o 6.1. Overview of the DOM Level 2 Event Model
+ 6.1.1. Terminology
o 6.2. Description of event flow
+ 6.2.1. Basic event flow
+ 6.2.2. Event Capture
+ 6.2.3. Event bubbling
+ 6.2.4. Event cancelation
o 6.3. Event listener registration
+ 6.3.1. Event registration interfaces
+ 6.3.2. Interaction with HTML 4.0 event listeners
o 6.4. Event interface
o 6.5. DocumentEvent interface
o 6.6. Event set definitions
+ 6.6.1. User Interface event types
+ 6.6.2. Mouse event types
+ 6.6.3. Key event types
+ 6.6.4. Mutation event types
+ 6.6.5. HTML event types
* Chapter 7: Document Object Model Traversal
o 7.1. Overview
+ 7.1.1. Iterators
+ 7.1.2. Filters
+ 7.1.3. TreeWalker
o 7.2. Formal Interface Definition
* Chapter 8: Document Object Model Range
o 8.1. Introduction
o 8.2. Definitions and Notation
+ 8.2.1. Position
+ 8.2.2. Selection and Partial Selection
+ 8.2.3. Notation
o 8.3. Creating a Range
o 8.4. Changing a Range's Position
o 8.5. Comparing Range End-Points
o 8.6. Deleting Content with a Range
o 8.7. Extracting Content
o 8.8. Cloning Content
o 8.9. Inserting Content
o 8.10. Surrounding Content
o 8.11. Miscellaneous Members
o 8.12. Range modification under document mutation
+ 8.12.1. Insertions
+ 8.12.2. Deletions
o 8.13. Formal Description of the Range Interface
* Appendix A: Changes
o A.1. Changes between DOM Level 1 and DOM Level 2
+ A.1.1. Changes to DOM Level 1 interfaces
+ A.1.2. New interfaces
* Appendix B: IDL Definitions
o B.1. Document Object Model Core
o B.2. Document Object Model HTML
o B.3. Document Object Model Views
o B.4. Document Object Model Stylesheets
o B.5. Document Object Model CSS
o B.6. Document Object Model Events
o B.7. Document Object Model Traversal
o B.8. Document Object Model Range
* Appendix C: Java Language Binding
o C.1. Document Object Model Core
o C.2. Document Object Model HTML
o C.3. Document Object Model Views
o C.4. Document Object Model Stylesheets
o C.5. Document Object Model CSS
o C.6. Document Object Model Events
o C.7. Document Object Model Traversal
o C.8. Document Object Model Range
* Appendix D: ECMA Script Language Binding
o D.1. Document Object Model Core
o D.2. Document Object Model HTML
o D.3. Document Object Model Views
o D.4. Document Object Model Stylesheets
o D.5. Document Object Model CSS
o D.6. Document Object Model Events
o D.7. Document Object Model Traversal
o D.8. Document Object Model Range
* Acknowledgments
* Glossary
* References
* Objects Index
* Index
Copyright Notice
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What is the Document Object Model?
Editors
Jonathan Robie, Software AG
Introduction
The Document Object Model (DOM) is an application programming interface
(API) for HTML and XML documents. It defines the logical structure of
documents and the way a document is accessed and manipulated. In the DOM
specification, the term "document" is used in the broad sense -
increasingly, XML is being used as a way of representing many different
kinds of information that may be stored in diverse systems, and much of this
would traditionally be seen as data rather than as documents. Nevertheless,
XML presents this data as documents, and the DOM may be used to manage this
data.
With the Document Object Model, programmers can build documents, navigate
their structure, and add, modify, or delete elements and content. Anything
found in an HTML or XML document can be accessed, changed, deleted, or added
using the Document Object Model, with a few exceptions - in particular, the
DOM interfaces for the XML internal and external subsets have not yet been
specified.
As a W3C specification, one important objective for the Document Object
Model is to provide a standard programming interface that can be used in a
wide variety of environments and applications. The DOM is designed to be
used with any programming language. In order to provide a precise,
language-independent specification of the DOM interfaces, we have chosen to
define the specifications in OMG IDL, as defined in the CORBA 2.2
specification [CORBA]. In addition to the OMG IDL specification, we provide
language bindings for Java and ECMAScript (an industry-standard scripting
language based on JavaScript and JScript) [Java] [ECMAScript]. Note: OMG IDL
is used only as a language-independent and implementation-neutral way to
specify interfaces. Various other IDLs could have been used. In general,
IDLs are designed for specific computing environments. The Document Object
Model can be implemented in any computing environment, and does not require
the object binding runtimes generally associated with such IDLs.
What the Document Object Model is
The DOM is a programming API for documents. It is based on an object
structure that closely resembles the structure of the documents it models.
For instance, consider this table, taken from an HTML document:
| Shady Grove |
Aeolian |
| Over the River, Charlie |
Dorian |
The DOM represents this table like this:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[DOM representation of the example table]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
DOM representation of the example table
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the DOM, documents have a logical structure which is very much like a
tree; to be more precise, it is like a "forest" or "grove", which can
contain more than one tree. Each document contains zero or one doctype
nodes, one root element node, and zero or more comments or processing
instructions; the root element serves as the root of the element tree for
the document. However, the DOM does not specify that documents must be
implemented as a tree or a grove, nor does it specify how the relationships
among objects be implemented. The DOM is a logical model that may be
implemented in any convenient manner. In this specification, we use the term
structure model to describe the tree-like representation of a document; we
specifically avoid terms like "tree" or "grove" in order to avoid implying a
particular implementation. One important property of DOM structure models is
structural isomorphism: if any two Document Object Model implementations are
used to create a representation of the same document, they will create the
same structure model, in accordance with the XML Information Set [Infoset].
The name "Document Object Model" was chosen because it is an "object model"
in the traditional object oriented design sense: documents are modeled using
objects, and the model encompasses not only the structure of a document, but
also the behavior of a document and the objects of which it is composed. In
other words, the nodes in the above diagram do not represent a data
structure, they represent objects, which have functions and identity. As an
object model, the DOM identifies:
* the interfaces and objects used to represent and manipulate a document
* the semantics of these interfaces and objects - including both behavior
and attributes
* the relationships and collaborations among these interfaces and objects
The structure of SGML documents has traditionally been represented by an
abstract data model, not by an object model. In an abstract data model, the
model is centered around the data. In object oriented programming languages,
the data itself is encapsulated in objects that hide the data, protecting it
from direct external manipulation. The functions associated with these
objects determine how the objects may be manipulated, and they are part of
the object model.
What the Document Object Model is not
This section is designed to give a more precise understanding of the DOM by
distinguishing it from other systems that may seem to be like it.
* The Document Object Model is not a binary specification. DOM programs
written in the same language will be source code compatible across
platforms, but the DOM does not define any form of binary
interoperability.
* The Document Object Model is not a way of persisting objects to XML or
HTML. Instead of specifying how objects may be represented in XML, the
DOM specifies how XML and HTML documents are represented as objects, so
that they may be used in object oriented programs.
* The Document Object Model is not a set of data structures, it is an
object model that specifies interfaces. Although this document contains
diagrams showing parent/child relationships, these are logical
relationships defined by the programming interfaces, not
representations of any particular internal data structures.
* The Document Object Model does not define what information in a
document is relevant or how information in a document is structured.
For XML, this is specified by the W3C XML Information Set [Infoset].
The DOM is simply an API to this information set.
* The Document Object Model, despite its name, is not a competitor to the
Component Object Model (COM). COM, like CORBA, is a language
independent way to specify interfaces and objects; the DOM is a set of
interfaces and objects designed for managing HTML and XML documents.
The DOM may be implemented using language-independent systems like COM
or CORBA; it may also be implemented using language-specific bindings
like the Java or ECMAScript bindings specified in this document.
Where the Document Object Model came from
The DOM originated as a specification to allow JavaScript scripts and Java
programs to be portable among Web browsers. "Dynamic HTML" was the immediate
ancestor of the Document Object Model, and it was originally thought of
largely in terms of browsers. However, when the DOM Working Group was formed
at W3C, it was also joined by vendors in other domains, including HTML or
XML editors and document repositories. Several of these vendors had worked
with SGML before XML was developed; as a result, the DOM has been influenced
by SGML Groves and the HyTime standard. Some of these vendors had also
developed their own object models for documents in order to provide an API
for SGML/XML editors or document repositories, and these object models have
also influenced the DOM.
Entities and the DOM Core
In the fundamental DOM interfaces, there are no objects representing
entities. Numeric character references, and references to the pre-defined
entities in HTML and XML, are replaced by the single character that makes up
the entity's replacement. For example, in:
This is a dog & a cat
the "&" will be replaced by the character "&", and the text in the P
element will form a single continuous sequence of characters. Since numeric
character references and pre-defined entities are not recognized as such in
CDATA sections, or the SCRIPT and STYLE elements in HTML, they are not
replaced by the single character they appear to refer to. If the example
above were enclosed in a CDATA section, the "&" would not be replaced by
"&"; neither would the be recognized as a start tag. The representation
of general entities, both internal and external, are defined within the
extended (XML) interfaces of the Level 1 specification.
Note: When a DOM representation of a document is serialized as XML or HTML
text, applications will need to check each character in text data to see if
it needs to be escaped using a numeric or pre-defined entity. Failing to do
so could result in invalid HTML or XML. Also, implementations should be
aware of the fact that serialization into a character encoding ("charset")
that does not fully cover ISO 10646 may fail if there are characters in
markup or CDATA sections that are not present in the encoding.
Compliance
The Document Object Model level 2 consists of several modules: Core, HTML,
Views, StyleSheets, CSS, Events, Traversal, and Range. The DOM Core
represents the functionality used for XML documents, and also serves as the
basis for DOM HTML.
A compliant implementation of the DOM must implement all of the fundamental
interfaces in the Core chapter with the semantics as defined. Further, it
must implement at least one of the HTML DOM and the extended (XML)
interfaces with the semantics as defined. The other modules are optional.
DOM Interfaces and DOM Implementations
The DOM specifies interfaces which may be used to manage XML or HTML
documents. It is important to realize that these interfaces are an
abstraction - much like "abstract base classes" in C++, they are a means of
specifying a way to access and manipulate an application's internal
representation of a document. Interfaces do not imply a particular concrete
implementation. Each DOM application is free to maintain documents in any
convenient representation, as long as the interfaces shown in this
specification are supported. Some DOM implementations will be existing
programs that use the DOM interfaces to access software written long before
the DOM specification existed. Therefore, the DOM is designed to avoid
implementation dependencies; in particular,
1. Attributes defined in the IDL do not imply concrete objects which must
have specific data members - in the language bindings, they are
translated to a pair of get()/set() functions, not to a data member.
Read-only attributes have only a get() function in the language
bindings.
2. DOM applications may provide additional interfaces and objects not
found in this specification and still be considered DOM compliant.
3. Because we specify interfaces and not the actual objects that are to be
created, the DOM can not know what constructors to call for an
implementation. In general, DOM users call the createXXX() methods on
the Document class to create document structures, and DOM
implementations create their own internal representations of these
structures in their implementations of the createXXX() functions.
1. Document Object Model Core
Editors
Arnaud Le Hors, W3C
Mike Champion, ArborText (for DOM Level 1 from November 20, 1997)
Steve Byrne, JavaSoft (for DOM Level 1 until November 19, 1997)
Gavin Nicol, Inso EPS (for DOM Level 1)
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad, Inc. (for DOM Level 1)
1.1. Overview of the DOM Core Interfaces
This section defines a minimal set of objects and interfaces for accessing
and manipulating document objects. The functionality specified in this
section (the Core functionality) is sufficient to allow software developers
and web script authors to access and manipulate parsed HTML and XML content
inside conforming products. The DOM Core API also allows creation and
population of a Document object using only DOM API calls; loading a Document
and saving it persistently is left to the product that implements the DOM
API.
1.1.1. The DOM Structure Model
The DOM presents documents as a hierarchy of Node objects that also
implement other, more specialized interfaces. Some types of nodes may have
child nodes of various types, and others are leaf nodes that cannot have
anything below them in the document structure. The node types, and which
node types they may have as children, are as follows:
* Document -- Element (maximum of one), ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
DocumentType
* DocumentFragment -- Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text,
CDATASection, EntityReference
* DocumentType -- no children
* EntityReference -- Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text,
CDATASection, EntityReference
* Element -- Element, Text, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, CDATASection,
EntityReference
* Attr -- Text, EntityReference
* ProcessingInstruction -- no children
* Comment -- no children
* Text -- no children
* CDATASection -- no children
* Entity -- Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference
* Notation -- no children
The DOM also specifies a NodeList interface to handle ordered lists of
Nodes, such as the children of a Node, or the elements returned by the
getElementsByTagName method of the Element interface, and also a
NamedNodeMap interface to handle unordered sets of nodes referenced by their
name attribute, such as the attributes of an Element. NodeList and
NamedNodeMap objects in the DOM are "live", that is, changes to the
underlying document structure are reflected in all relevant NodeList and
NamedNodeMap objects. For example, if a DOM user gets a NodeList object
containing the children of an Element, then subsequently adds more children
to that element (or removes children, or modifies them), those changes are
automatically reflected in the NodeList, without further action on the
user's part. Likewise, changes to a Node in the tree are reflected in all
references to that Node in NodeList and NamedNodeMap objects.
Finally, the interfaces Text, Comment, and CDATASection all inherit from the
CharacterData interface.
1.1.2. Memory Management
Most of the APIs defined by this specification are interfaces rather than
classes. That means that an actual implementation need only expose methods
with the defined names and specified operation, not actually implement
classes that correspond directly to the interfaces. This allows the DOM APIs
to be implemented as a thin veneer on top of legacy applications with their
own data structures, or on top of newer applications with different class
hierarchies. This also means that ordinary constructors (in the Java or C++
sense) cannot be used to create DOM objects, since the underlying objects to
be constructed may have little relationship to the DOM interfaces. The
conventional solution to this in object-oriented design is to define factory
methods that create instances of objects that implement the various
interfaces. Objects implementing some interface "X" are created by a
"createX()" method on the Document interface; this is because all DOM
objects live in the context of a specific Document.
The DOM Level 2 API does not define a standard way to create
DOMImplementation objects; actual DOM implementations must provide some
proprietary way of bootstrapping these DOM interfaces, and then all other
objects can be built from there.
The Core DOM APIs are designed to be compatible with a wide range of
languages, including both general-user scripting languages and the more
challenging languages used mostly by professional programmers. Thus, the DOM
APIs need to operate across a variety of memory management philosophies,
from language platforms that do not expose memory management to the user at
all, through those (notably Java) that provide explicit constructors but
provide an automatic garbage collection mechanism to automatically reclaim
unused memory, to those (especially C/C++) that generally require the
programmer to explicitly allocate object memory, track where it is used, and
explicitly free it for re-use. To ensure a consistent API across these
platforms, the DOM does not address memory management issues at all, but
instead leaves these for the implementation. Neither of the explicit
language bindings devised by the DOM Working Group (for ECMAScript and Java)
require any memory management methods, but DOM bindings for other languages
(especially C or C++) may require such support. These extensions will be the
responsibility of those adapting the DOM API to a specific language, not the
DOM WG.
1.1.3. Naming Conventions
While it would be nice to have attribute and method names that are short,
informative, internally consistent, and familiar to users of similar APIs,
the names also should not clash with the names in legacy APIs supported by
DOM implementations. Furthermore, both OMG IDL and ECMAScript have
significant limitations in their ability to disambiguate names from
different namespaces that makes it difficult to avoid naming conflicts with
short, familiar names. So, DOM names tend to be long and quite descriptive
in order to be unique across all environments.
The Working Group has also attempted to be internally consistent in its use
of various terms, even though these may not be common distinctions in other
APIs. For example, we use the method name "remove" when the method changes
the structural model, and the method name "delete" when the method gets rid
of something inside the structure model. The thing that is deleted is not
returned. The thing that is removed may be returned, when it makes sense to
return it.
1.1.4. Inheritance vs Flattened Views of the API
The DOM Core APIs present two somewhat different sets of interfaces to an
XML/HTML document; one presenting an "object oriented" approach with a
hierarchy of inheritance, and a "simplified" view that allows all
manipulation to be done via the Node interface without requiring casts (in
Java and other C-like languages) or query interface calls in COM
environments. These operations are fairly expensive in Java and COM, and the
DOM may be used in performance-critical environments, so we allow
significant functionality using just the Node interface. Because many other
users will find the inheritance hierarchy easier to understand than the
"everything is a Node" approach to the DOM, we also support the full
higher-level interfaces for those who prefer a more object-oriented API.
In practice, this means that there is a certain amount of redundancy in the
API. The Working Group considers the "inheritance" approach the primary view
of the API, and the full set of functionality on Node to be "extra"
functionality that users may employ, but that does not eliminate the need
for methods on other interfaces that an object-oriented analysis would
dictate. (Of course, when the O-O analysis yields an attribute or method
that is identical to one on the Node interface, we don't specify a
completely redundant one). Thus, even though there is a generic nodeName
attribute on the Node interface, there is still a tagName attribute on the
Element interface; these two attributes must contain the same value, but the
Working Group considers it worthwhile to support both, given the different
constituencies the DOM API must satisfy.
1.1.5. The DOMString type
To ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:
* Type Definition DOMString
A DOMString is a sequence of 16-bit units.
IDL Definition
typedef sequence DOMString;
* Applications must encode DOMString using UTF-16 (defined in Appendix
C.3 of [UNICODE] and Amendment 1 of [ISO-10646]).
The UTF-16 encoding was chosen because of its widespread industry
practice. Please note that for both HTML and XML, the document
character set (and therefore the notation of numeric character
references) is based on UCS [ISO-10646]. A single numeric character
reference in a source document may therefore in some cases correspond
to two 16-bit units in a DOMString (a high surrogate and a low
surrogate). Note: Even though the DOM defines the name of the string
type to be DOMString, bindings may use different names. For, example
for Java, DOMString is bound to the String type because it also uses
UTF-16 as its encoding.
Note: As of August 1998, the OMG IDL specification included a wstring type.
However, that definition did not meet the interoperability criteria of the
DOM API since it relied on encoding negotiation to decide the width of a
character.
1.1.6. Case sensitivity in the DOM
The DOM has many interfaces that imply string matching. HTML processors
generally assume an uppercase (less often, lowercase) normalization of names
for such things as elements, while XML is explicitly case sensitive. For the
purposes of the DOM, string matching is performed purely by binary
comparison of the 16-bit units of the DOMString. As such, the DOM assumes
that any normalizations take place in the processor, before the DOM
structures are built.
This then raises the issue of exactly what normalizations occur. The W3C
I18N working group is in the process of defining exactly which
normalizations are necessary for applications implementing the DOM.
1.1.7. XML Namespaces
The DOM Level 2 supports XML namespaces [Namespaces] by augmenting several
interfaces of the DOM Level 1 Core to allow creating and manipulating
elements and attributes associated to a namespace.
As far as the DOM is concerned, special attributes used for declaring XML
namespaces are still exposed and can be manipulated just like any other
attribute. Moving a node within a document, using the DOM, in no case
results in a change of its namespace prefix or namespace URI. Similarly,
creating a node with a namespace prefix and namespace URI, or changing the
namespace prefix of a node, does not result in any addition, removal, or
modification of any special attributes for declaring the appropriate XML
namespaces. Applications are therefore responsible for declaring every
namespace in use when saving a document into XML.
The new methods, such as createElementNS and createAttributeNS of the
Document interface, are meant to be used by namespace aware applications.
Simple applications that do not use namespaces can use the DOM Level 1
methods, such as createElement and createAttribute. Elements and attributes
created in this way do not have any namespace prefix or namespace URI.
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
The interfaces within this section are considered fundamental, and must be
fully implemented by all conforming implementations of the DOM, including
all HTML DOM implementations, unless otherwise specified.
Exception DOMException
DOM operations only raise exceptions in "exceptional" circumstances,
i.e., when an operation is impossible to perform (either for logical
reasons, because data is lost, or because the implementation has become
unstable). In general, DOM methods return specific error values in
ordinary processing situation, such as out-of-bound errors when using
NodeList.
Implementations may raise other exceptions under other circumstances.
For example, implementations may raise an implementation-dependent
exception if a null argument is passed.
Some languages and object systems do not support the concept of
exceptions. For such systems, error conditions may be indicated using
native error reporting mechanisms. For some bindings, for example,
methods may return error codes similar to those listed in the
corresponding method descriptions.
IDL Definition
exception DOMException {
unsigned short code;
};
// ExceptionCode
const unsigned short INDEX_SIZE_ERR = 1;
const unsigned short DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR = 2;
const unsigned short HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR = 3;
const unsigned short WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR = 4;
const unsigned short INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR = 5;
const unsigned short NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR = 6;
const unsigned short NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR = 7;
const unsigned short NOT_FOUND_ERR = 8;
const unsigned short NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR = 9;
const unsigned short INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR = 10;
Definition group ExceptionCode
An integer indicating the type of error generated.
Defined Constants
INDEX_SIZE_ERR If index or size is negative, or
greater than the allowed value
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR If the specified range of text
does not fit into a DOMString
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR If any node is inserted
somewhere it doesn't belong
If a node is used in a different
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR document than the one that
created it (that doesn't support
it)
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR If an invalid character is
specified, such as in a name.
NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR If data is specified for a node
which does not support data
If an attempt is made to modify
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR an object where modifications
are not allowed
If an attempt was made to
NOT_FOUND_ERR reference a node in a context
where it does not exist
If the implementation does not
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR support the type of object
requested
If an attempt is made to add an
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR attribute that is already inuse
elsewhere
Interface DOMImplementation
The DOMImplementation interface provides a number of methods for
performing operations that are independent of any particular instance
of the document object model.
IDL Definition
interface DOMImplementation {
boolean hasFeature(in DOMString feature,
in DOMString version);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
DocumentType createDocumentType(in DOMString qualifiedName,
in DOMString publicID,
in DOMString systemID);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Document createDocument(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName,
in DocumentType doctype)
raises(DOMException);
};
Methods
hasFeature
Test if the DOM implementation implements a specific feature.
Parameters
DOMString feature The package name of the feature to test
(case-insensitive). The legal values are
defined throughout this specification.
The DOM Level 2 includes "HTML", "XML",
as well as the several others.
DOMString version This is the version number of the package
name to test. In Level 2, this is the
string "2.0". If the version is not
specified, supporting any version of the
feature will cause the method to return
true.
Return Value
boolean true if the feature is implemented in the specified
version, false otherwise.
No Exceptions
createDocumentType introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates an empty DocumentType node. HTML-only DOM
implementations do not need to implement this method.
Parameters
DOMString qualifiedName The qualified name of the document
type to be created.
DOMString publicID The document type public
identifier.
DOMString systemID The document type system
identifier.
Return Value
DocumentType A new DocumentType node with Node.ownerDocument
set to null.
No Exceptions
createDocument introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates an XML Document object of the specified type with its
document element. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need
to implement this method.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the
document element to create, or
null.
DOMString qualifiedName The qualified name of the
document element to be created.
DocumentType doctype The type of document to be
created or null.
When doctype is not null, its
Node.ownerDocument attribute is
set to the document being
created.
Return Value
Document A new Document object.
Exceptions
DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if doctype has
already been used with a different document.
Interface DocumentFragment
DocumentFragment is a "lightweight" or "minimal" Document object. It is
very common to want to be able to extract a portion of a document's
tree or to create a new fragment of a document. Imagine implementing a
user command like cut or rearranging a document by moving fragments
around. It is desirable to have an object which can hold such fragments
and it is quite natural to use a Node for this purpose. While it is
true that a Document object could fulfill this role, a Document object
can potentially be a heavyweight object, depending on the underlying
implementation. What is really needed for this is a very lightweight
object. DocumentFragment is such an object.
Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children
of another Node -- may take DocumentFragment objects as arguments; this
results in all the child nodes of the DocumentFragment being moved to
the child list of this node.
The children of a DocumentFragment node are zero or more nodes
representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of the
document. DocumentFragment nodes do not need to be well-formed XML
documents (although they do need to follow the rules imposed upon
well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top nodes).
For example, a DocumentFragment might have only one child and that
child node could be a Text node. Such a structure model represents
neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML document.
When a DocumentFragment is inserted into a Document (or indeed any
other Node that may take children) the children of the DocumentFragment
and not the DocumentFragment itself are inserted into the Node. This
makes the DocumentFragment very useful when the user wishes to create
nodes that are siblings; the DocumentFragment acts as the parent of
these nodes so that the user can use the standard methods from the Node
interface, such as insertBefore and appendChild.
IDL Definition
interface DocumentFragment : Node {
};
Interface Document
The Document interface represents the entire HTML or XML document.
Conceptually, it is the root of the document tree, and provides the
primary access to the document's data.
Since elements, text nodes, comments, processing instructions, etc.
cannot exist outside the context of a Document, the Document interface
also contains the factory methods needed to create these objects. The
Node objects created have a ownerDocument attribute which associates
them with the Document within whose context they were created.
IDL Definition
interface Document : Node {
readonly attribute DocumentType doctype;
readonly attribute DOMImplementation implementation;
readonly attribute Element documentElement;
Element createElement(in DOMString tagName)
raises(DOMException);
DocumentFragment createDocumentFragment();
Text createTextNode(in DOMString data);
Comment createComment(in DOMString data);
CDATASection createCDATASection(in DOMString data)
raises(DOMException);
ProcessingInstruction createProcessingInstruction(in DOMString target,
in DOMString data)
raises(DOMException);
Attr createAttribute(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
EntityReference createEntityReference(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
NodeList getElementsByTagName(in DOMString tagname);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node importNode(in Node importedNode,
in boolean deep)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Element createElementNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Attr createAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
};
Attributes
doctype of type DocumentType, readonly
The Document Type Declaration (see DocumentType) associated
with this document. For HTML documents as well as XML
documents without a document type declaration this returns
null. The DOM Level 2 does not support editing the Document
Type Declaration, therefore docType cannot be altered in any
way, including through the use of methods, such as insertNode
or removeNode, inherited from Node.
implementation of type DOMImplementation, readonly
The DOMImplementation object that handles this document. A
DOM application may use objects from multiple
implementations.
documentElement of type Element, readonly
This is a convenience attribute that allows direct access to
the child node that is the root element of the document. For
HTML documents, this is the element with the tagName "HTML".
Methods
createElement
Creates an element of the type specified. Note that the
instance returned implements the Element interface, so
attributes can be specified directly on the returned object.
In addition, if there are known attributes with default
values, Attr nodes representing them are automatically
created and attached to the element.
To create an element with a qualified name and namespace URI,
use the createElementNS method.
Parameters
DOMString tagName The name of the element type to
instantiate. For XML, this is
case-sensitive. For HTML, the tagName
parameter may be provided in any case,
but it must be mapped to the canonical
uppercase form by the DOM implementation.
Return Value
Element A new Element object.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an invalid character.
createDocumentFragment
Creates an empty DocumentFragment object.
Return Value
DocumentFragment A new DocumentFragment.
No Parameters
No Exceptions
createTextNode
Creates a Text node given the specified string.
Parameters
DOMString data The data for the node.
Return Value
Text The new Text object.
No Exceptions
createComment
Creates a Comment node given the specified string.
Parameters
DOMString data The data for the node.
Return Value
Comment The new Comment object.
No Exceptions
createCDATASection
Creates a CDATASection node whose value is the specified
string.
Parameters
DOMString data The data for the CDATASection contents.
Return Value
CDATASection The new CDATASection object.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is
an HTML document.
createProcessingInstruction
Creates a ProcessingInstruction node given the specified name
and data strings.
Parameters
DOMString target The target part of the processing
instruction.
DOMString data The data for the node.
Return Value
ProcessingInstruction The new ProcessingInstruction object.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if an invalid
character is specified.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is
an HTML document.
createAttribute
Creates an Attr of the given name. Note that the Attr
instance can then be set on an Element using the setAttribute
method.
To create an attribute with a qualified name and namespace
URI, use the createAttributeNS method.
Parameters
DOMString name The name of the attribute.
Return Value
Attr A new Attr object.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an invalid character.
createEntityReference
Creates an EntityReference object.
Parameters
DOMString name The name of the entity to reference.
Return Value
EntityReference The new EntityReference object.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an invalid character.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is
an HTML document.
getElementsByTagName
Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given tag name
in the order in which they would be encountered in a preorder
traversal of the Document tree.
Parameters
DOMString tagname The name of the tag to match on. The
special value "*" matches all tags.
Return Value
NodeList A new NodeList object containing all the matched
Elements.
No Exceptions
importNode introduced in DOM Level 2
Imports a node from another document to this document. The
returned node has no parent (parentNode is null). The source
node is not altered or removed from the original document;
this method creates a new copy of the source node.
For all nodes, importing a node creates a node object owned
by the importing document, with attribute values identical to
the source node's nodeName and nodeType, plus the attributes
related to namespaces (prefix and namespaces URI). As in the
cloneNode operation on a Node, the source node is not
altered.
Additional information is copied as appropriate to the
nodeType, attempting to mirror the behavior expected if a
fragment of XML or HTML source was copied from one document
to another, recognizing that the two documents may have
different DTDs in the XML case. The following list describes
the specifics for every type of node.
ELEMENT_NODE
Specified attribute nodes of the source element are
imported, and the generated Attr nodes are attached to
the generated Element. Default attributes are not
copied, though if the document being imported into
defines default attributes for this element name, those
are assigned. If importNode deep parameter was set to
true, the descendants of the source element will be
recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled
to form the corresponding subtree.
ATTRIBUTE_NODE
The specified flag is set to true on the generated Attr.
The descendants of the the source Attr are recursively
imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the
corresponding subtree.
Note that the deep parameter does not apply to Attr
nodes; they always carry their children with them when
imported.
TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE
These three types of nodes inheriting from CharacterData
copy their data and length attributes from those of the
source node.
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
Only the EntityReference itself is copied, even if a
deep import is requested, since the source and
destination documents might have defined the entity
differently. If the document being imported into
provides a definition for this entity name, its value is
assigned.
ENTITY_NODE
Entity nodes can be imported, however in the current
release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability
to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be
considered for addition to a future release of the DOM.
On import, the publicID, systemID, and notationName
attributes are copied. If a deep import is requested,
the descendants of the the source Entity is recursively
imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the
corresponding subtree.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
The imported node copies its target and data values from
those of the source node.
DOCUMENT_NODE
Document nodes cannot be imported.
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
DocumentType nodes cannot be imported.
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
If the deep option was set true, the descendants of the
source element will be recursively imported and the
resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding
subtree. Otherwise, this simply generates an empty
DocumentFragment.
NOTATION_NODE
Notation nodes be imported, however in the current
release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability
to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be
considered for addition to a future release of the DOM.
On import, the publicID, and systemID attributes are
copied.
Note that the deep parameter does not apply to Notation
nodes since they never have any children.
Parameters
Node importedNode The node to import.
boolean deep If true, recursively import the
subtree under the specified node; if
false, import only the node itself, as
explained above. This does not apply
to Attr, EntityReference, and Notation
nodes.
Return Value
Node The imported node that belongs to this Document.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the type of node
being imported is not supported.
createElementNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates an element of the given qualified name and namespace
URI. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement
this method.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the element to
create. When it is null or an empty
string, this method behaves like
createElement.
DOMString qualifiedName The qualified name of the element
type to instantiate.
Return Value
Element A new Element object with the following attributes:
Attribute Value
Node.nodeName qualifiedName
Node.namespaceNamenamespaceURI
Node.prefix prefix, extracted from
qualifiedName, or null if there
is no prefix
Node.localName local name, extracted from
qualifiedName
Element.tagName qualifiedName
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an invalid character.
createAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates an attribute of the given qualified name and
namespace URI. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to
implement this method.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the attribute
to create. When it is null or an
empty string, this method behaves
like createAttribute.
DOMString qualifiedName The qualified name of the attribute
to instantiate.
Return Value
Attr A new Attr object with the following attributes:
Attribute Value
Node.nodeName qualifiedName
Node.namespaceNamenamespaceURI
Node.prefix prefix, extracted from
qualifiedName, or null if there is
no prefix
Node.localName local name, extracted from
qualifiedName
Attr.name qualifiedName
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an invalid character.
getElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given local
name and namespace URI in the order in which they would be
encountered in a preorder traversal of the Document tree.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the elements to
match on. The special value "*"
matches all namespaces. When it is
null or an empty string, this method
behaves like getElementsByTagName.
DOMString localName The local name of the elements to
match on. The special value "*"
matches all local names.
Return Value
NodeList A new NodeList object containing all the matched
Elements.
No Exceptions
Interface Node
The Node interface is the primary datatype for the entire Document
Object Model. It represents a single node in the document tree. While
all objects implementing the Node interface expose methods for dealing
with children, not all objects implementing the Node interface may have
children. For example, Text nodes may not have children, and adding
children to such nodes results in a DOMException being raised.
The attributes nodeName, nodeValue and attributes are included as a
mechanism to get at node information without casting down to the
specific derived interface. In cases where there is no obvious mapping
of these attributes for a specific nodeType (e.g., nodeValue for an
Element or attributes for a Comment), this returns null. Note that the
specialized interfaces may contain additional and more convenient
mechanisms to get and set the relevant information.
IDL Definition
interface Node {
// NodeType
const unsigned short ELEMENT_NODE = 1;
const unsigned short ATTRIBUTE_NODE = 2;
const unsigned short TEXT_NODE = 3;
const unsigned short CDATA_SECTION_NODE = 4;
const unsigned short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE = 5;
const unsigned short ENTITY_NODE = 6;
const unsigned short PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE = 7;
const unsigned short COMMENT_NODE = 8;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_NODE = 9;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE = 10;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE = 11;
const unsigned short NOTATION_NODE = 12;
readonly attribute DOMString nodeName;
attribute DOMString nodeValue;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
readonly attribute unsigned short nodeType;
readonly attribute Node parentNode;
readonly attribute NodeList childNodes;
readonly attribute Node firstChild;
readonly attribute Node lastChild;
readonly attribute Node previousSibling;
readonly attribute Node nextSibling;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap attributes;
// Modified in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute Document ownerDocument;
Node insertBefore(in Node newChild,
in Node refChild)
raises(DOMException);
Node replaceChild(in Node newChild,
in Node oldChild)
raises(DOMException);
Node removeChild(in Node oldChild)
raises(DOMException);
Node appendChild(in Node newChild)
raises(DOMException);
boolean hasChildNodes();
Node cloneNode(in boolean deep);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean supports(in DOMString feature,
in DOMString version);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString namespaceURI;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
attribute DOMString prefix;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString localName;
};
Definition group NodeType
An integer indicating which type of node this is.
Defined Constants
ELEMENT_NODE The node is a Element.
ATTRIBUTE_NODE The node is an Attr.
TEXT_NODE The node is a Text node.
CDATA_SECTION_NODE The node is a CDATASection.
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE The node is an EntityReference.
ENTITY_NODE The node is an Entity.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE The node is a
ProcessingInstruction.
COMMENT_NODE The node is a Comment.
DOCUMENT_NODE The node is a Document.
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE The node is a DocumentType.
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE The node is a DocumentFragment.
NOTATION_NODE The node is a Notation.
The values of nodeName, nodeValue, and attributes vary according
to the node type as follows:
nodeName nodeValue attributes
Element tagName null NamedNodeMap
Attr name of attribute value of null
attribute
Text #text content of null
the text
node
CDATASection #cdata-section content of null
the CDATA
Section
EntityReference name of entity null null
referenced
Entity entity name null null
ProcessingInstructiontarget entire null
content
excluding
the target
Comment #comment content of null
the comment
Document #document null null
DocumentType document type name null null
DocumentFragment #document-fragment null null
Notation notation name null null
Attributes
nodeName of type DOMString, readonly
The name of this node, depending on its type; see the table
above.
nodeValue of type DOMString
The value of this node, depending on its type; see the table
above. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no
effect.
Exceptions on setting
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the
node is readonly.
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return
more characters than fit in a DOMString
variable on the implementation platform.
nodeType of type unsigned short, readonly
A code representing the type of the underlying object, as
defined above.
parentNode of type Node, readonly
The parent of this node. All nodes, except Attr, Document,
DocumentFragment, Entity, and Notation may have a parent.
However, if a node has just been created and not yet added to
the tree, or if it has been removed from the tree, this is
null.
childNodes of type NodeList, readonly
A NodeList that contains all children of this node. If there
are no children, this is a NodeList containing no nodes. The
content of the returned NodeList is "live" in the sense that,
for instance, changes to the children of the node object that
it was created from are immediately reflected in the nodes
returned by the NodeList accessors; it is not a static
snapshot of the content of the node. This is true for every
NodeList, including the ones returned by the
getElementsByTagName method.
firstChild of type Node, readonly
The first child of this node. If there is no such node, this
returns null.
lastChild of type Node, readonly
The last child of this node. If there is no such node, this
returns null.
previousSibling of type Node, readonly
The node immediately preceding this node. If there is no such
node, this returns null.
nextSibling of type Node, readonly
The node immediately following this node. If there is no such
node, this returns null.
attributes of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
A NamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it
is an Element) or null otherwise.
ownerDocument of type Document, readonly, modified in DOM Level 2
The Document object associated with this node. This is also
the Document object used to create new nodes. When this node
is a Document or a DocumentType, which is not used with any
Document yet, this is null.
namespaceURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level
2
The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified.
When this node is of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and
ATTRIBUTE_NODE, this is always null and setting it has no
effect.
This is not a computed value that is the result of a
namespace lookup based on an examination of the namespace
declarations in scope. It is merely the namespace URI given
at creation time.
For nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as
createElement from the Document interface, this is null.
prefix of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 2
The namespace prefix of this node, or null if it is
unspecified. When this node is of any type other than
ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE this is always null and
setting it has no effect.
For nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as
createElement from the Document interface, this is null.
Note that setting this attribute changes the nodeName
attribute, which holds the qualified name, as well as the
tagName and name attributes of the Element and Attr
interfaces, when applicable.
Exceptions on setting
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
prefix contains an invalid character.
localName of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node.
For nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as
createElement from the Document interface, and for nodes of
any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE this is
the same as the nodeName attribute.
Methods
insertBefore
Inserts the node newChild before the existing child node
refChild. If refChild is null, insert newChild at the end of
the list of children.
If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, all of its children
are inserted, in the same order, before refChild. If the
newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed.
Parameters
Node newChild The node to insert.
Node refChild The reference node, i.e., the node before
which the new node must be inserted.
Return Value
Node The node being inserted.
Exceptions
DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is
of a type that does not allow children of the
type of the newChild node, or if the node to
insert is one of this node's ancestors.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newChild was
created from a different document than the one
that created this node.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if refChild is not a
child of this node.
replaceChild
Replaces the child node oldChild with newChild in the list of
children, and returns the oldChild node. If the newChild is
already in the tree, it is first removed.
Parameters
Node newChild The new node to put in the child list.
Node oldChild The node being replaced in the list.
Return Value
Node The node replaced.
Exceptions
DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is
of a type that does not allow children of the
type of the newChild node, or it the node to
put in is one of this node's ancestors.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newChild was
created from a different document than the one
that created this node.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldChild is not a
child of this node.
removeChild
Removes the child node indicated by oldChild from the list of
children, and returns it.
Parameters
Node oldChild The node being removed.
Return Value
Node The node removed.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldChild is not a
child of this node.
appendChild
Adds the node newChild to the end of the list of children of
this node. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is
first removed.
Parameters
Node newChild The node to add.
If it is a DocumentFragment object, the
entire contents of the document fragment are
moved into the child list of this node
Return Value
Node The node added.
Exceptions
DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is
of a type that does not allow children of the
type of the newChild node, or if the node to
append is one of this node's ancestors.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newChild was
created from a different document than the one
that created this node.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
hasChildNodes
This is a convenience method to allow easy determination of
whether a node has any children.
Return Value
boolean true if the node has any children, false if the node
has no children.
No Parameters
No Exceptions
cloneNode
Returns a duplicate of this node, i.e., serves as a generic
copy constructor for nodes. The duplicate node has no parent
(parentNode returns null.).
Cloning an Element copies all attributes and their values,
including those generated by the XML processor to represent
defaulted attributes, but this method does not copy any text
it contains unless it is a deep clone, since the text is
contained in a child Text node. Cloning any other type of
node simply returns a copy of this node.
Parameters
boolean deep If true, recursively clone the subtree under
the specified node; if false, clone only the
node itself (and its attributes, if it is an
Element).
Return Value
Node The duplicate node.
No Exceptions
supports introduced in DOM Level 2
Tests whether the DOM implementation implements a specific
feature and that feature is supported by this node.
Parameters
DOMString feature The package name of the feature to test.
This is the same name as what can be
passed to the method hasFeature on
DOMImplementation.
DOMString version This is the version number of the package
name to test. In Level 2, version 1, this
is the string "2.0". If the version is
not specified, supporting any version of
the feature will cause the method to
return true.
Return Value
boolean Returns true if this node defines a subtree within
which the specified feature is supported, false
otherwise.
No Exceptions
Interface NodeList
The NodeList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered
collection of nodes, without defining or constraining how this
collection is implemented.
The items in the NodeList are accessible via an integral index,
starting from 0.
IDL Definition
interface NodeList {
Node item(in unsigned long index);
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
};
Attributes
length of type unsigned long, readonly
The number of nodes in the list. The range of valid child
node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.
Methods
item
Returns the indexth item in the collection. If index is
greater than or equal to the number of nodes in the list,
this returns null.
Parameters
unsigned long index Index into the collection.
Return Value
Node The node at the indexth position in the NodeList, or
null if that is not a valid index.
No Exceptions
Interface NamedNodeMap
Objects implementing the NamedNodeMap interface are used to represent
collections of nodes that can be accessed by name. Note that
NamedNodeMap does not inherit from NodeList; NamedNodeMaps are not
maintained in any particular order. Objects contained in an object
implementing NamedNodeMap may also be accessed by an ordinal index, but
this is simply to allow convenient enumeration of the contents of a
NamedNodeMap, and does not imply that the DOM specifies an order to
these Nodes.
IDL Definition
interface NamedNodeMap {
Node getNamedItem(in DOMString name);
Node setNamedItem(in Node arg)
raises(DOMException);
Node removeNamedItem(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
Node item(in unsigned long index);
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node getNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node removeNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
};
Attributes
length of type unsigned long, readonly
The number of nodes in the map. The range of valid child node
indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.
Methods
getNamedItem
Retrieves a node specified by name.
Parameters
DOMString name Name of a node to retrieve.
Return Value
Node A Node (of any type) with the specified name, or null
if the specified name did not identify any node in the
map.
No Exceptions
setNamedItem
Adds a node using its nodeName attribute, which is the
qualified name when applicable.
As the nodeName attribute is used to derive the name which
the node must be stored under, multiple nodes of certain
types (those that have a "special" string value) cannot be
stored as the names would clash. This is seen as preferable
to allowing nodes to be aliased.
Parameters
Node arg A node to store in a named node map. The node will
later be accessible using the value of the
nodeName attribute of the node. If a node with
that name is already present in the map, it is
replaced by the new one.
Return Value
Node If the new Node replaces an existing node with the same
name the previously existing Node is returned,
otherwise null is returned.
Exceptions
DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if arg was created
from a different document than the one that
created the NamedNodeMap.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
NamedNodeMap is readonly.
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if arg is an Attr
that is already an attribute of another Element
object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr
nodes to re-use them in other elements.
removeNamedItem
Removes a node specified by name.
Parameters
DOMString name The name of a node to remove. When this
NamedNodeMap contains the attributes
attached to an element, as returned by the
attributes attribute of the Node interface,
if the removed attribute is known to have a
default value, an attribute immediately
appears containing the default value.
Return Value
Node The node removed from the map if a node with such a
name exists.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if there is no node named
name in the map.
item
Returns the indexth item in the map. If index is greater than
or equal to the number of nodes in the map, this returns
null.
Parameters
unsigned long index Index into the map.
Return Value
Node The node at the indexth position in the NamedNodeMap,
or null if that is not a valid index.
No Exceptions
getNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Retrieves a node specified by local name and namespace URI.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this
method.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the node to
retrieve. When it is null or an
empty string, this method behaves
like getNamedItem.
DOMString localName The local name of the node to
retrieve.
Return Value
Node A Node (of any type) with the specified name, or null
if the specified name did not identify any node in the
map.
No Exceptions
removeNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Removes a node specified by local name and namespace URI.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this
method.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the node to
remove. When it is null or an empty
string, this method behaves like
removeNamedItem.
DOMString name The local name of the node to
remove. When this NamedNodeMap
contains the attributes attached to
an element, as returned by the
attributes attribute of the Node
interface, if the removed attribute
is known to have a default value, an
attribute immediately appears
containing the default value.
Return Value
Node The node removed from the map if a node with such a
local name and namespace URI exists.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if there is no node named
name in the map.
Interface CharacterData
The CharacterData interface extends Node with a set of attributes and
methods for accessing character data in the DOM. For clarity this set
is defined here rather than on each object that uses these attributes
and methods. No DOM objects correspond directly to CharacterData,
though Text and others do inherit the interface from it. All offsets in
this interface start from 0.
IDL Definition
interface CharacterData : Node {
attribute DOMString data;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
DOMString substringData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count)
raises(DOMException);
void appendData(in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
void insertData(in unsigned long offset,
in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
void deleteData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count)
raises(DOMException);
void replaceData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count,
in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
};
Attributes
data of type DOMString
The character data of the node that implements this
interface. The DOM implementation may not put arbitrary
limits on the amount of data that may be stored in a
CharacterData node. However, implementation limits may mean
that the entirety of a node's data may not fit into a single
DOMString. In such cases, the user may call substringData to
retrieve the data in appropriately sized pieces.
Exceptions on setting
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the
node is readonly.
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return
more characters than fit in a DOMString
variable on the implementation platform.
length of type unsigned long, readonly
The number of 16-bit units that are available through data
and the substringData method below. This may have the value
zero, i.e., CharacterData nodes may be empty.
Methods
substringData
Extracts a range of data from the node.
Parameters
unsigned long offset Start offset of substring to extract.
unsigned long count The number of 16-bit units to extract.
Return Value
DOMString The specified substring. If the sum of offset and
count exceeds the length, then all 16-bit units to
the end of the data are returned.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data, or if the specified count
is negative.
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified
range of text does not fit into a DOMString.
appendData
Append the string to the end of the character data of the
node. Upon success, data provides access to the concatenation
of data and the DOMString specified.
Parameters
DOMString arg The DOMString to append.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
insertData
Insert a string at the specified character offset.
Parameters
unsigned long offset The character offset at which to
insert.
DOMString arg The DOMString to insert.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
deleteData
Remove a range of 16-bit units from the node. Upon success,
data and length reflect the change.
Parameters
unsigned long offset The offset from which to start
removing.
unsigned long count The number of 16-bit units to delete.
If the sum of offset and count exceeds
length then all 16-bit units from
offset to the end of the data are
deleted.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data, or if the specified count
is negative.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
replaceData
Replace the characters starting at the specified 16-bit unit
offset with the specified string.
Parameters
unsigned long offset The offset from which to start
replacing.
unsigned long count The number of 16-bit units to replace.
If the sum of offset and count exceeds
length, then all 16-bit units to the
end of the data are replaced (i.e.,
the effect is the same as a remove
method call with the same range,
followed by an append method
invocation).
DOMString arg The DOMString with which the range
must be replaced.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data, or if the specified count
is negative.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
Interface Attr
The Attr interface represents an attribute in an Element object.
Typically the allowable values for the attribute are defined in a
document type definition.
Attr objects inherit the Node interface, but since they are not
actually child nodes of the element they describe, the DOM does not
consider them part of the document tree. Thus, the Node attributes
parentNode, previousSibling, and nextSibling have a null value for Attr
objects. The DOM takes the view that attributes are properties of
elements rather than having a separate identity from the elements they
are associated with; this should make it more efficient to implement
such features as default attributes associated with all elements of a
given type. Furthermore, Attr nodes may not be immediate children of a
DocumentFragment. However, they can be associated with Element nodes
contained within a DocumentFragment. In short, users and implementors
of the DOM need to be aware that Attr nodes have some things in common
with other objects inheriting the Node interface, but they also are
quite distinct.
The attribute's effective value is determined as follows: if this
attribute has been explicitly assigned any value, that value is the
attribute's effective value; otherwise, if there is a declaration for
this attribute, and that declaration includes a default value, then
that default value is the attribute's effective value; otherwise, the
attribute does not exist on this element in the structure model until
it has been explicitly added. Note that the nodeValue attribute on the
Attr instance can also be used to retrieve the string version of the
attribute's value(s).
In XML, where the value of an attribute can contain entity references,
the child nodes of the Attr node provide a representation in which
entity references are not expanded. These child nodes may be either
Text or EntityReference nodes. Because the attribute type may be
unknown, there are no tokenized attribute values.
IDL Definition
interface Attr : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString name;
readonly attribute boolean specified;
attribute DOMString value;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute Element ownerElement;
};
Attributes
name of type DOMString, readonly
Returns the name of this attribute.
specified of type boolean, readonly
If this attribute was explicitly given a value in the
original document, this is true; otherwise, it is false. Note
that the implementation is in charge of this attribute, not
the user. If the user changes the value of the attribute
(even if it ends up having the same value as the default
value) then the specified flag is automatically flipped to
true. To re-specify the attribute as the default value from
the DTD, the user must delete the attribute. The
implementation will then make a new attribute available with
specified set to false and the default value (if one exists).
In summary:
+ If the attribute has an assigned value in the document
then specified is true, and the value is the assigned
value.
+ If the attribute has no assigned value in the document
and has a default value in the DTD, then specified is
false, and the value is the default value in the DTD.
+ If the attribute has no assigned value in the document
and has a value of #IMPLIED in the DTD, then the
attribute does not appear in the structure model of the
document.
value of type DOMString
On retrieval, the value of the attribute is returned as a
string. Character and general entity references are replaced
with their values.
On setting, this creates a Text node with the unparsed
contents of the string.
Exceptions on setting
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the
node is readonly.
ownerElement of type Element, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The Element node this attribute is attached to or null if
this attribute is not in use.
Interface Element
By far the vast majority of objects (apart from text) that authors
encounter when traversing a document are Element nodes. Assume the
following XML document:
When represented using DOM, the top node is a Document node containing
an Element node for "elementExample" which contains two child Element
nodes, one for "subelement1" and one for "subelement2". "subelement1"
contains no child nodes.
Elements may have attributes associated with them; since the Element
interface inherits from Node, the generic Node interface attribute
attributes may be used to retrieve the set of all attributes for an
element. There are methods on the Element interface to retrieve either
an Attr object by name or an attribute value by name. In XML, where an
attribute value may contain entity references, an Attr object should be
retrieved to examine the possibly fairly complex sub-tree representing
the attribute value. On the other hand, in HTML, where all attributes
have simple string values, methods to directly access an attribute
value can safely be used as a convenience.
IDL Definition
interface Element : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString tagName;
DOMString getAttribute(in DOMString name);
void setAttribute(in DOMString name,
in DOMString value)
raises(DOMException);
void removeAttribute(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
Attr getAttributeNode(in DOMString name);
Attr setAttributeNode(in Attr newAttr)
raises(DOMException);
Attr removeAttributeNode(in Attr oldAttr)
raises(DOMException);
NodeList getElementsByTagName(in DOMString name);
void normalize();
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
DOMString getAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
void setAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName,
in DOMString value)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
void removeAttributeNS(in DOMString namespacURI,
in DOMString localName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Attr getAttributeNodeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Attr setAttributeNodeNS(in Attr newAttr)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
};
Attributes
tagName of type DOMString, readonly
The name of the element. For example, in:
...
,
tagName has the value "elementExample". Note that this is
case-preserving in XML, as are all of the operations of the
DOM. The HTML DOM returns the tagName of an HTML element in
the canonical uppercase form, regardless of the case in the
source HTML document.
Methods
getAttribute
Retrieves an attribute value by name.
Parameters
DOMString name The name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value
DOMString The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if
that attribute does not have a specified or
default value.
No Exceptions
setAttribute
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that name is
already present in the element, its value is changed to be
that of the value parameter. This value is a simple string,
it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as
syntax to be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as
literal text, and needs to be appropriately escaped by the
implementation when it is written out. In order to assign an
attribute value that contains entity references, the user
must create an Attr node plus any Text and EntityReference
nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use
setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.
Parameters
DOMString name The name of the attribute to create or
alter.
DOMString value Value to set in string form.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an invalid character.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
removeAttribute
Removes an attribute by name. If the removed attribute is
known to have a default value, an attribute immediately
appears containing the default value.
Parameters
DOMString name The name of the attribute to remove.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
getAttributeNode
Retrieves an Attr node by name.
Parameters
DOMString name The name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value
Attr The Attr node with the specified attribute name or null
if there is no such attribute.
No Exceptions
setAttributeNode
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that name is
already present in the element, it is replaced by the new
one.
Parameters
Attr newAttr The Attr node to add to the attribute list.
Return Value
Attr If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute
with the same name, the previously existing Attr node
is returned, otherwise null is returned.
Exceptions
DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newAttr was
created from a different document than the one
that created the element.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if newAttr is
already an attribute of another Element object.
The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes
to re-use them in other elements.
removeAttributeNode
Removes the specified attribute.
Parameters
Attr oldAttr The Attr node to remove from the attribute
list. If the removed Attr has a default value
it is immediately replaced.
Return Value
Attr The Attr node that was removed.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldAttr is not an
attribute of the element.
getElementsByTagName
Returns a NodeList of all descendant elements with a given
tag name, in the order in which they would be encountered in
a preorder traversal of the Element tree.
Parameters
DOMString name The name of the tag to match on. The special
value "*" matches all tags.
Return Value
NodeList A list of matching Element nodes.
No Exceptions
normalize
Puts all Text nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree
underneath this Element into a "normal" form where only
markup (e.g., tags, comments, processing instructions, CDATA
sections, and entity references) separates Text nodes, i.e.,
there are no adjacent Text nodes. This can be used to ensure
that the DOM view of a document is the same as if it were
saved and re-loaded, and is useful when operations (such as
XPointer lookups) that depend on a particular document tree
structure are to be used.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
getAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Retrieves an attribute value by local name and namespace URI.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this
method.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the attribute
to retrieve. When it is null or an
empty string, this method behaves
like getAttribute.
DOMString localName The local name of the attribute to
retrieve.
Return Value
DOMString The Attr value as a string, or an empty string if
that attribute does not have a specified or
default value.
No Exceptions
setAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that local name
and namespace URI is already present in the element, its
value is changed to be that of the value parameter. This
value is a simple string, it is not parsed as it is being
set. So any markup (such as syntax to be recognized as an
entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be
appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is
written out. In order to assign an attribute value that
contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node
plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the
appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNodeNS or
setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this
method.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the attribute
to create or alter. When it is null
or an empty string, this method
behaves like getAttribute.
DOMString localName The local name of the attribute to
create or alter.
DOMString value The value to set in string form.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an invalid character.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
removeAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Removes an attribute by local name and namespace URI. If the
removed attribute has a default value it is immediately
replaced. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to
implement this method.
Parameters
DOMString namespacURI The namespace URI of the attribute to
remove. When it is null or an empty
string, this method behaves like
removeAttribute.
DOMString localName The local name of the attribute to
remove.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
getAttributeNodeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Retrieves an Attr node by local name and namespace URI.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this
method.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the attribute
to retrieve. When it is null or an
empty string, this method behaves
like getAttributeNode.
DOMString localName The local name of the attribute to
retrieve.
Return Value
Attr The Attr node with the specified attribute local name
and namespace URI or null if there is no such
attribute.
No Exceptions
setAttributeNodeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that local name
and namespace URI is already present in the element, it is
replaced by the new one. HTML-only DOM implementations do not
need to implement this method.
Parameters
Attr newAttr The Attr node to add to the attribute list.
When the node has no namespaceURI, this method
behaves like setAttributeNode.
Return Value
Attr If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute
with the same local name and namespace URI, the
previously existing Attr node is returned, otherwise
null is returned.
Exceptions
DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newAttr was
created from a different document than the one
that created the element.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if newAttr is
already an attribute of another ElementNS
object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr
nodes to re-use them in other elements.
getElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given local
name and namespace URI in the order in which they would be
encountered in a preorder traversal of the Document tree,
starting from this node. HTML-only DOM implementations do not
need to implement this method.
Parameters
DOMString namespaceURI The namespace URI of the elements to
match on. The special value "*"
matches all namespaces. When it is
null or an empty string, this method
behaves like getElementsByTagName.
DOMString localName The local name of the elements to
match on. The special value "*"
matches all local names.
Return Value
NodeList A new NodeList object containing all the matched
Elements.
No Exceptions
Interface Text
The Text interface inherits from CharacterData and represents the
textual content (termed character data in XML) of an Element or Attr.
If there is no markup inside an element's content, the text is
contained in a single object implementing the Text interface that is
the only child of the element. If there is markup, it is parsed into a
list of elements and Text nodes that form the list of children of the
element.
When a document is first made available via the DOM, there is only one
Text node for each block of text. Users may create adjacent Text nodes
that represent the contents of a given element without any intervening
markup, but should be aware that there is no way to represent the
separations between these nodes in XML or HTML, so they will not (in
general) persist between DOM editing sessions. The normalize() method
on Element merges any such adjacent Text objects into a single node for
each block of text; this is recommended before employing operations
that depend on a particular document structure, such as navigation with
XPointers.
IDL Definition
interface Text : CharacterData {
Text splitText(in unsigned long offset)
raises(DOMException);
};
Methods
splitText
Breaks this Text node into two Text nodes at the specified
offset, keeping both in the tree as siblings. This node then
only contains all the content up to the offset point. And a
new Text node, which is inserted as the next sibling of this
node, contains all the content at and after the offset point.
Parameters
unsigned long offset The 16-bit unit offset at which to
split, starting from 0.
Return Value
Text The new Text node.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
Interface Comment
This interface inherits from CharacterData and represents the content
of a comment, i.e., all the characters between the starting ''. Note that this is the definition of a comment in XML,
and, in practice, HTML, although some HTML tools may implement the full
SGML comment structure.
IDL Definition
interface Comment : CharacterData {
};
1.3. Extended Interfaces
The interfaces defined here form part of the DOM Core specification, but
objects that expose these interfaces will never be encountered in a DOM
implementation that deals only with HTML. As such, HTML-only DOM
implementations do not need to have objects that implement these interfaces.
A DOM application can use the hasFeature method of the DOMImplementation
interface to determine whether they are supported or not. The feature string
for all the interfaces listed in this section is "XML".
Interface CDATASection
CDATA sections are used to escape blocks of text containing characters
that would otherwise be regarded as markup. The only delimiter that is
recognized in a CDATA section is the "]]>" string that ends the CDATA
section. CDATA sections can not be nested. The primary purpose is for
including material such as XML fragments, without needing to escape all
the delimiters.
The DOMString attribute of the Text node holds the text that is
contained by the CDATA section. Note that this may contain characters
that need to be escaped outside of CDATA sections and that, depending
on the character encoding ("charset") chosen for serialization, it may
be impossible to write out some characters as part of a CDATA section.
The CDATASection interface inherits from the CharacterData interface
through the Text interface. Adjacent CDATASections nodes are not merged
by use of the normalize method of the Element interface.
IDL Definition
interface CDATASection : Text {
};
Interface DocumentType
Each Document has a doctype attribute whose value is either null or a
DocumentType object. The DocumentType interface in the DOM Core
provides an interface to the list of entities that are defined for the
document, and little else because the effect of namespaces and the
various XML scheme efforts on DTD representation are not clearly
understood as of this writing.
The DOM Level 2 doesn't support editing DocumentType nodes.
IDL Definition
interface DocumentType : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString name;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap entities;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap notations;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString publicID;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString systemID;
};
Attributes
name of type DOMString, readonly
The name of DTD; i.e., the name immediately following the
DOCTYPE keyword.
entities of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
A NamedNodeMap containing the general entities, both external
and internal, declared in the DTD. Duplicates are discarded.
For example in:
]>
the interface provides access to foo and bar but not baz.
Every node in this map also implements the Entity interface.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing entities, therefore
entities cannot be altered in any way.
notations of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
A NamedNodeMap containing the notations declared in the DTD.
Duplicates are discarded. Every node in this map also
implements the Notation interface.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing notations, therefore
notations cannot be altered in any way.
publicID of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The public identifier of this document type.
systemID of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The system identifier of this document type.
Interface Notation
This interface represents a notation declared in the DTD. A notation
either declares, by name, the format of an unparsed entity (see section
4.7 of the XML 1.0 specification), or is used for formal declaration of
Processing Instruction targets (see section 2.6 of the XML 1.0
specification). The nodeName attribute inherited from Node is set to
the declared name of the notation.
The DOM Level 1 does not support editing Notation nodes; they are
therefore readonly.
A Notation node does not have any parent.
IDL Definition
interface Notation : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
};
Attributes
publicId of type DOMString, readonly
The public identifier of this notation. If the public
identifier was not specified, this is null.
systemId of type DOMString, readonly
The system identifier of this notation. If the system
identifier was not specified, this is null.
Interface Entity
This interface represents an entity, either parsed or unparsed, in an
XML document. Note that this models the entity itself not the entity
declaration. Entity declaration modeling has been left for a later
Level of the DOM specification.
The nodeName attribute that is inherited from Node contains the name of
the entity.
An XML processor may choose to completely expand entities before the
structure model is passed to the DOM; in this case there will be no
EntityReference nodes in the document tree.
XML does not mandate that a non-validating XML processor read and
process entity declarations made in the external subset or declared in
external parameter entities. This means that parsed entities declared
in the external subset need not be expanded by some classes of
applications, and that the replacement value of the entity may not be
available. When the replacement value is available, the corresponding
Entity node's child list represents the structure of that replacement
text. Otherwise, the child list is empty.
The resolution of the children of the Entity (the replacement value)
may be lazily evaluated; actions by the user (such as calling the
childNodes method on the Entity Node) are assumed to trigger the
evaluation.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing Entity nodes; if a user wants
to make changes to the contents of an Entity, every related
EntityReference node has to be replaced in the structure model by a
clone of the Entity's contents, and then the desired changes must be
made to each of those clones instead. All the descendants of an Entity
node are readonly.
An Entity node does not have any parent.
IDL Definition
interface Entity : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
readonly attribute DOMString notationName;
};
Attributes
publicId of type DOMString, readonly
The