This section defines a 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.
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. For XML and HTML, the node types, and which node types they
may have as children, are as follows:
Document -- Element (maximum of
one), ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
DocumentType (maximum of one) DocumentFragment -- Element,
ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference DocumentType -- no childrenEntityReference -- Element,
ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference Element -- Element,
Text, Comment,
ProcessingInstruction, CDATASection,
EntityReferenceAttr -- Text,
EntityReferenceProcessingInstruction -- no childrenComment -- no childrenText -- no childrenCDATASection -- no childrenEntity -- Element,
ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
Text, CDATASection,
EntityReferenceNotation -- no childrenThe 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.
Most of the APIs defined by this specification are
interfaces rather than classes. That means that
an implementation need only expose methods with
the defined names and specified operation, not
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; 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 bindings 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 Working Group.
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 make it difficult to avoid naming
conflicts with short, familiar names. So, some 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.
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.
DOMString typeTo ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:
A DOMString is a sequence of 16-bit units.
typedef sequence<unsigned short> DOMString;
DOMString using UTF-16
(defined in [Unicode] and Amendment 1 of
[ISO/IEC 10646]).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 negotiation
to decide the width and encoding of a character.
DOMTimeStamp typeTo ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:
A DOMTimeStamp represents a number of milliseconds.
typedef unsigned long long DOMTimeStamp;
Note:
Even though the DOM uses the type DOMTimeStamp,
bindings may use different types. For example for Java,
DOMTimeStamp is bound to the long
type. In ECMAScript, TimeStamp is bound to
the Date type because the range of the integer
type is too small.
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. In addition,
the DOM assumes that any case normalizations take place in the
processor, before the DOM structures are
built.
Note: Besides case folding, there are additional normalizations that can be applied to text. The W3C I18N Working Group is in the process of defining exactly which normalizations are necessary, and where they should be applied. The W3C I18N Working Group expects to require early normalization, which means that data read into the DOM is assumed to already be normalized. The DOM and applications built on top of it in this case only have to assure that text remains normalized when being changed. For further details, please see [Charmod].
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. However, nodes are permanently bound to namespace URIs as they get created. Consequently, 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. Namespace validation is not enforced; the DOM application is responsible. In particular, since the mapping between prefixes and namespace URIs is not enforced, in general, the resulting document cannot be serialized naively. For example, applications may have to declare every namespace in use when serializing a document.
Namespace URIs are treated literally, whether they are absolute or relative. No processing of the namespace URI such as "absolutization" or "canonicalization" is performed by the DOM implementation.
Note: In the DOM, all namespace declaration attributes are by definition bound to the namespace URI: "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/". These are the attributes whose namespace prefix or qualified name is "xmlns". Although, at the time of writing, this is not part of the XML Namespaces specification[Namespaces], it is planned to be incorporated in a future revision.
In a document with no namespaces, the child list of an
EntityReference node is always the same as that of the
corresponding Entity. This is not true in a document where
an entity contains unbound namespace
prefixes. In such a case, the descendants of the
corresponding EntityReference nodes may be bound to
different namespace URIs,
depending on where the entity references are. Also, because, in the
DOM, nodes always remain bound to the same namespace URI, moving such
EntityReference nodes can lead to documents that cannot be
serialized. This is also true when the DOM Level 1 method
createEntityReference of the Document
interface is used to create entity references that correspond to such
entities, since the descendants of the returned
EntityReference are unbound. The DOM Level 2 does not
support any mechanism to resolve namespace prefixes. For all of these
reasons, use of such entities and entity references should be avoided
or used with extreme care. A future Level of the DOM may include some
additional support for handling these.
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, namespace URI, or local
name.
Note: DOM Level 1 methods are namespace ignorant. Therefore, while it
is safe to use these methods when not dealing with namespaces, using
them and the new ones at the same time should be avoided. DOM Level 1
methods solely identify attribute nodes by their nodeName.
On the contrary, the DOM Level 2 methods related to namespaces,
identify attribute nodes by their namespaceURI and
localName. Because of this fundamental difference, mixing
both sets of methods can lead to unpredictable results. In particular,
using setAttributeNS, an element may have two
attributes (or more) that have the same nodeName, but
different namespaceURIs. Calling getAttribute
with that nodeName could then return any of those
attributes. The result depends on the implementation. Similarly, using
setAttributeNode, one can set two attributes (or more)
that have different nodeNames but the same
prefix and namespaceURI. In this case
getAttributeNodeNS will return either attribute, in an
implementation dependent manner. The only guarantee in such cases is
that all methods that access a named item by its nodeName
will access the same item, and all methods which access a node by its
URI and local name will access the same node. For instance,
setAttribute and setAttributeNS affect the
node that getAttribute and getAttributeNS,
respectively, return.
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.
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 situations, 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.
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;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short INVALID_STATE_ERR = 11;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short SYNTAX_ERR = 12;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR = 13;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short NAMESPACE_ERR = 14;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short INVALID_ACCESS_ERR = 15;
An integer indicating the type of error generated.
Note: Other numeric codes are reserved for W3C for possible future use.
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR
INDEX_SIZE_ERR
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR
INVALID_ACCESS_ERR
, introduced in DOM Level 2.INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR
, introduced in DOM Level 2.INVALID_STATE_ERR
, introduced in DOM Level 2.NAMESPACE_ERR
, introduced in DOM Level 2.NOT_FOUND_ERR
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR
NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
SYNTAX_ERR
, introduced in DOM Level 2.WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
The DOMImplementation interface provides a
number of methods for performing operations that are independent
of any particular instance of the document object model.
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)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Document createDocument(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName,
in DocumentType doctype)
raises(DOMException);
};
createDocument introduced in DOM Level 2Document object of the specified type
with its document element. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to
implement this method.namespaceURI of type
DOMStringqualifiedName of type
DOMStringdoctype of type
DocumentTypenull.doctype is not null, its
Node.ownerDocument attribute is set to the document
being created.|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name contains an illegal character. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if |
createDocumentType introduced in DOM Level 2DocumentType node. Entity
declarations and notations are not made available. Entity reference
expansions and default attribute additions do not occur. It is expected
that a future version of the DOM will provide a way for populating a
DocumentType.qualifiedName of type
DOMStringpublicId of type
DOMStringsystemId of type
DOMString|
A new |
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name contains an illegal character. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the |
hasFeaturefeature of type
DOMStringversion of type
DOMStringtrue.
|
|
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.
interface DocumentFragment : Node {
};
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.
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);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Element getElementById(in DOMString elementId);
};
doctype of type DocumentType, readonlyDocumentType)
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, which are inherited from
the Node interface.
documentElement of type Element, readonly
implementation of type DOMImplementation, readonlyDOMImplementation object that handles this
document. A DOM application may use objects from multiple
implementations.
createAttributeAttr of the given name.
Note that the Attr instance
can then be set on an Element using the
setAttributeNode method. createAttributeNS method.name of type
DOMString|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character. |
createAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2namespaceURI of type
DOMStringqualifiedName of type
DOMString|
A new
|
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name contains an illegal character. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the |
createCDATASectionCDATASection node whose value is
the specified string.data of type
DOMStringCDATASection contents.|
The new |
|
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document. |
createCommentcreateDocumentFragmentDocumentFragment object.
|
A new |
createElementElement interface, so attributes
can be specified directly on the returned object.Attr nodes representing them are automatically created and
attached to the element.createElementNS method.tagName of type
DOMStringtagName parameter may be provided in any case,
but it must be mapped to the canonical uppercase form by
the DOM implementation.
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character. |
createElementNS introduced in DOM Level 2namespaceURI of type
DOMStringqualifiedName of type
DOMString|
A new
|
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name contains an illegal character. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the |
createEntityReferenceEntityReference object. In addition, if
the referenced entity is known, the child list of the
EntityReference node is made the same as that of the
corresponding Entity node.Note: If any descendant of the Entity node has an
unbound namespace prefix,
the corresponding descendant of the created
EntityReference node is also unbound; (its
namespaceURI is null). The DOM Level 2 does
not support any mechanism to resolve namespace prefixes.
name of type
DOMString|
The new |
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character. NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document. |
createProcessingInstructionProcessingInstruction node given
the specified name and data strings.|
The new |
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified target contains an illegal character. NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document. |
createTextNodegetElementById introduced in DOM Level 2Element whose ID
is given by elementId. If no such element exists, returns
null. Behavior is not defined if more than one element has
this ID.
Note: The DOM implementation must have information that says which
attributes are of type ID. Attributes with the name "ID" are not of type ID unless
so defined. Implementations that do not know whether attributes are of type
ID or not are expected to return null.
elementId of type
DOMStringid value for an element.|
The matching element. |
getElementsByTagNamegetElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2NodeList of all the Elements
with a given local name and
namespace URI in the order in which they are encountered in a
preorder traversal of the Document tree.namespaceURI of type
DOMStringlocalName of type
DOMStringimportNode introduced in DOM Level 2parentNode is null). The
source node is not altered or removed from the original document; this
method creates a new copy of the source node.nodeName and nodeType, plus the
attributes related to namespaces (prefix,
localName, and namespaceURI). As in the
cloneNode operation on a Node, the source
node is not altered.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 each type of
node.
ownerElement attribute is set to
null and the specified flag is set to
true on the generated Attr. The
descendants of the source Attr are recursively
imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the
corresponding subtree.deep parameter has no effect on
Attr nodes; they always carry their children with
them when imported.deep option was set to 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.Document nodes cannot be imported.DocumentType nodes cannot be imported.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 the 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.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.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.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.Notation 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.publicId and
systemId attributes are copied.deep parameter has no effect on
Notation nodes since they never have any
children.target and
data values from those of the source node.CharacterData copy their data and
length attributes from those of the source
node.importedNode of type
Nodedeep of type
booleantrue, recursively import the subtree
under the specified node; if false, import only
the node itself, as explained above. This has no effect on
Attr, EntityReference, and
Notation nodes.|
The imported node that belongs to this
|
|
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the type of node being imported is not supported. |
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.
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:
void normalize();
// 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;
};
An integer indicating which type of node this is.
Note: Numeric codes up to 200 are reserved to W3C for possible future use.
ATTRIBUTE_NODE
Attr.CDATA_SECTION_NODE
CDATASection.COMMENT_NODE
Comment.DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
DocumentFragment.DOCUMENT_NODE
Document.DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
DocumentType.ELEMENT_NODE
Element.ENTITY_NODE
Entity.ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
EntityReference.NOTATION_NODE
Notation.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
ProcessingInstruction.TEXT_NODE
Text node.The values of nodeName, nodeValue,
and attributes vary according to the node type as follows:
| nodeName | nodeValue | attributes | |
| Attr | name of attribute | value of attribute | null |
| CDATASection | #cdata-section | content of the CDATA Section | null |
| Comment | #comment | content of the comment | null |
| Document | #document | null | null |
| DocumentFragment | #document-fragment | null | null |
| DocumentType | document type name | null | null |
| Element | tag name | null | NamedNodeMap |
| Entity | entity name | null | null |
| EntityReference | name of entity referenced | null | null |
| Notation | notation name | null | null |
| ProcessingInstruction | target | entire content excluding the target | null |
| Text | #text | content of the text node | null |
attributes of type NamedNodeMap, readonlyNamedNodeMap containing the
attributes of this node (if it is an Element) or
null otherwise.
childNodes of type NodeList, readonlyNodeList that contains all children of this
node. If there are no children, this is a NodeList
containing no nodes.
firstChild of type Node, readonlynull.
lastChild of type Node, readonlynull.
localName of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2ELEMENT_NODE
and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM
Level 1 method, such as createElement from the
Document interface, this is always
null.
namespaceURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2null if it is unspecified.ELEMENT_NODE
and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM
Level 1 method, such as createElement from the
Document interface, this is always
null.Note: Per the Namespaces in XML Specification [Namespaces] an attribute does not inherit its namespace from the element it is attached to. If an attribute is not explicitly given a namespace, it simply has no namespace.
nextSibling of type Node, readonlynull.
nodeName of type DOMString, readonly
nodeType of type unsigned short, readonly
nodeValue of type DOMStringnull, setting it has no
effect.
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NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly. |
|
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return more
characters than fit in a |
ownerDocument of type Document, readonly, modified in DOM Level 2Document 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.
parentNode of type Node, readonlyAttr, 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.
prefix of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 2null if it is unspecified.nodeName attribute, which holds the qualified name, as well as
the tagName and name attributes of
the Element and Attr interfaces,
when applicable.namespaceURI and localName do not change.ELEMENT_NODE
and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM
Level 1 method, such as createElement from the
Document interface, this is always
null.
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified prefix contains an illegal character. NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the specified |
previousSibling of type Node, readonlynull.
appendChildnewChild to the end of the list of
children of this node. If the newChild is already in the
tree, it is first removed.newChild of type
NodeDocumentFragment
object, the entire contents of the document fragment are moved
into the child list of this node|
The node added. |
|
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is of a type
that does not allow children of the type of the WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
cloneNodeparentNode is null.).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 an Attribute
directly, as opposed to be cloned as part of an Element
cloning operation, returns a specified attribute
(specified is true). Cloning any other type
of node simply returns a copy of this node.EntityReference clone are
readonly. In addition, clones
of unspecified Attr nodes are specified. And, cloning
Document, DocumentType, Entity,
and Notation nodes is implementation dependent.deep of type
booleantrue, recursively clone the subtree under the
specified node; if false, clone only the node itself (and
its attributes, if it is an Element).
|
The duplicate node. |
hasChildNodes
|
|
insertBeforenewChild before the
existing child node refChild. If
refChild is null, insert
newChild at the end of the list of children.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.|
The node being inserted. |
|
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is of a type
that does not allow children of the type of the WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly or if the parent of the node being inserted is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if |
normalize introduced in DOM Level 2Text nodes in the full depth of the
sub-tree underneath this Node, including attribute nodes,
into a "normal" form where only structure (e.g., elements, comments,
processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity references)
separates Text nodes, i.e., there are neither adjacent
Text nodes nor empty 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.Note: In cases where the document contains CDATASections, the
normalize operation alone may not be sufficient, since XPointers do
not differentiate between Text nodes and
CDATASection nodes.
removeChildoldChild from
the list of children, and returns it.oldChild of type
Node|
The node removed. |
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if |
replaceChildoldChild with
newChild in the list of children, and returns the
oldChild node.newChild is a DocumentFragment object,
oldChild is replaced by all of the
DocumentFragment children, which are inserted in the same
order. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is
first removed.|
The node replaced. |
|
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is of a type
that does not allow children of the type of the WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node or the parent of the new node is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if |
supports introduced in DOM Level 2feature of type
DOMStringhasFeature
on DOMImplementation.version of type
DOMStringtrue.
|
Returns |
The NodeList interface provides the abstraction of an
ordered collection of nodes, without defining or constraining how this
collection is implemented. NodeList objects in the DOM are
live.
The items in the NodeList are accessible via an
integral index, starting from 0.
interface NodeList {
Node item(in unsigned long index);
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
};
length of type unsigned long, readonlylength-1 inclusive.
itemindexth item in the collection.
If index is greater than or equal to the number
of nodes in the list, this returns null.index of type
unsigned long|
The node at the |
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.
NamedNodeMap objects in the DOM are live.
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 setNamedItemNS(in Node arg)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node removeNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName)
raises(DOMException);
};
length of type unsigned long, readonly0 to length-1
inclusive.
getNamedItemgetNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2namespaceURI of type
DOMStringlocalName of type
DOMStringitemindexth item in the map.
If index is greater than or equal to the number
of nodes in this map, this returns null.index of type
unsigned long|
The node at the |
removeNamedItemNode interface. If so, an attribute immediately appears
containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace
URI, local name, and prefix when applicable.name of type
DOMStringnodeName of the node to remove.|
The node removed from this map if a node with such a name exists. |
|
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if there is no node named
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly. |
removeNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2Node interface. If so, an
attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as
the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when
applicable.namespaceURI of type
DOMStringlocalName of type
DOMString|
The node removed from this map if a node with such a local name and namespace URI exists. |
|
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if there is no node with the specified
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly. |
setNamedItemnodeName attribute. If a node with
that name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new
one.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.arg of type
NodenodeName
attribute.|
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly. INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if |
setNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2namespaceURI and
localName. If a node with that namespace URI and that
local name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new
one.arg of type
NodenamespaceURI and
localName attributes.|
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly. INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if |
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.
As explained in the DOMString interface, text strings
in the DOM are represented in UTF-16, i.e. as a sequence of 16-bit
units. In the following, the term 16-bit units is used whenever
necessary to indicate that indexing on CharacterData is done in
16-bit units.
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);
};
data of type DOMStringCharacterData 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.
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly. |
|
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return more
characters than fit in a |
length of type unsigned long, readonlydata and the
substringData method below. This may have the value zero,
i.e., CharacterData nodes may be empty.
appendDatadata provides access to the concatenation of
data and the DOMString specified.
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
deleteDatadata and length
reflect the change.offset of type
unsigned longcount of type
unsigned longoffset and count exceeds
length then all 16-bit units from offset
to the end of the data are deleted.|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
insertData|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
replaceDataoffset of type
unsigned longcount of type
unsigned longoffset 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).arg of type
DOMStringDOMString with which the range must
be replaced.|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |