[W3C] Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification Version 1.0 W3C Working Draft 05 June 2001 This version: http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20010605 ( PostScript file , PDF file , plain text , ZIP file , single HTML file) Latest version: http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core Previous version: http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20010126 Editors: Arnaud Le Hors, IBM Gavin Nicol, Inso EPS (for DOM Level 1) Lauren Wood, SoftQuad, Inc. (for DOM Level 1) Mike Champion, ArborText (for DOM Level 1 from November 20, 1997) Steve Byrne, JavaSoft (for DOM Level 1 until November 19, 1997) Copyright ©2001 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract This specification defines the Document Object Model Core Level 3, 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 Core Level 3 builds on the Document Object Model Core Level 2. Status of this document This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. The latest status of this document series is maintained at the W3C. This document contains the Document Object Model Level 3 Core specification. This is a W3C Working Draft for review by W3C members and other interested parties. It is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them 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. 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/. This document has been produced as part of the W3C DOM Activity. The authors of this document are the DOM WG members. A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR. Table of contents * Expanded Table of Contents * Copyright Notice * 1. Document Object Model Core * Appendix A: Changes * Appendix B: Accessing code point boundaries * Appendix C: IDL Definitions * Appendix D: Java Language Binding * Appendix E: ECMA Script Language Binding * Appendix F: Acknowledgements * Glossary * References * Index 05 June 2001 Expanded Table of Contents * Expanded Table of Contents * Copyright Notice o W3C Document Copyright Notice and License o W3C Software Copyright Notice and License * 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. The DOMTimeStamp type + 1.1.7. The DOMKey type + 1.1.8. String comparisons in the DOM + 1.1.9. XML Namespaces + 1.1.10. Mutiple XML Datatypes in a DOM Document o 1.2. Fundamental Interfaces o 1.3. Extended Interfaces * Appendix A: Changes o A.1. Changes between DOM Level 2 Core and DOM Level 3 Core o A.2. Changes between DOM Level 1 Core and DOM Level 2 Core + A.2.1. Changes to DOM Level 1 Core interfaces and exceptions + A.2.2. New features * Appendix B: Accessing code point boundaries o B.1. Introduction o B.2. Methods * Appendix C: IDL Definitions * Appendix D: Java Language Binding o D.1. Java Binding Extension o D.2. Other Core interfaces * Appendix E: ECMA Script Language Binding * Appendix F: Acknowledgements o F.1. Production Systems * Glossary * References o 1. Normative references o 2. Informative references * Index 05 June 2001 Copyright Notice Copyright © 2001 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. This document is published under the W3C Document Copyright Notice and License. The bindings within this document are published under the W3C Software Copyright Notice and License. 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Notice of any changes or modifications to the W3C files, including the date changes were made. (We recommend you provide URIs to the location from which the code is derived.) THIS SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS," AND COPYRIGHT HOLDERS MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE OR DOCUMENTATION WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS. COPYRIGHT HOLDERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY USE OF THE SOFTWARE OR DOCUMENTATION. The name and trademarks of copyright holders may NOT be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to the software without specific, written prior permission. Title to copyright in this software and any associated documentation will at all times remain with copyright holders. 05 June 2001 1. Document Object Model Core Editors Arnaud Le Hors, IBM Gavin Nicol, Inso EPS (for DOM Level 1) Lauren Wood, SoftQuad, Inc. (for DOM Level 1) Mike Champion, ArborText (for DOM Level 1 from November 20, 1997) Steve Byrne, JavaSoft (for DOM Level 1 until November 19, 1997) Table of contents * 1.1. Overview of the DOM Core Interfaces o 1.1.1. The DOM Structure Model o 1.1.2. Memory Management o 1.1.3. Naming Conventions o 1.1.4. Inheritance vs. Flattened Views of the API o 1.1.5. The DOMString type + DOMString o 1.1.6. The DOMTimeStamp type + DOMTimeStamp o 1.1.7. The DOMKey type + DOMKey o 1.1.8. String comparisons in the DOM o 1.1.9. XML Namespaces o 1.1.10. Mutiple XML Datatypes in a DOM Document * 1.2. Fundamental Interfaces o DOMException, ExceptionCode, DOMImplementation, DocumentFragment, Document, Node, NodeList, NamedNodeMap, CharacterData, Attr, Element, Text, Comment * 1.3. Extended Interfaces o CDATASection, DocumentType, Notation, Entity, EntityReference, ProcessingInstruction 1.1. Overview of the DOM Core Interfaces 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 defined by the DOM API (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. 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 make it difficult to avoid naming conflicts with short, familiar names. So, DOM names tend to be long and 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, the DOM API uses 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 it is 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 valuetype DOMString sequence; Applications must encode DOMString using UTF-16 (defined in [Unicode] and Amendment 1 of [ISO/IEC 10646]). The UTF-16 encoding was chosen because of its widespread industry practice. 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 2000, the OMG IDL specification ([OMGIDL]) 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. 1.1.6. The DOMTimeStamp type To ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following: Type Definition DOMTimeStamp A DOMTimeStamp represents a number of milliseconds. IDL Definition 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. 1.1.7. The DOMKey type To ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following: Type Definition DOMKey A DOMKey is a unique key generated by the DOM implementation to uniquely identify DOM nodes. IDL Definition typedef Object DOMKey; Note: Even though the DOM uses the type DOMKey, bindings may use different types. For example for Java, DOMKey is bound to the Object type. In ECMAScript, DOMKey is bound to the Number type. 1.1.8. String comparisons 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. 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]. 1.1.9. XML Namespaces The DOM Level 2 (and higher) 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. DOM Level 2 (and higher) doesn't perform any URI normalization or canonicalization. The URIs given to the DOM are assumed to be valid (e.g., characters such as whitespaces are properly escaped), and no lexical checking is performed. Absolute URI references are treated as strings and compared literally. How relative namespace URI references are treated is undefined. To ensure interoperability only absolute namespace URI references (i.e., URI references beginning with a scheme name and a colon) should be used. Note that because the DOM does no lexical checking, the empty string will be treated as a real namespace URI in DOM Level 2 methods. Applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace. 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. 1.1.10. Mutiple XML Datatypes in a DOM Document As new XML vocabularies are developed, those defining the vocabularies are also beginning to define specialized APIs for manipulating XML instances of those vocabularies. This is usually done by extending the DOM to provide interfaces and methods that perform operations frequently needed their users. For example, the MathML [@@link] and SVG [@@link] specifications are developing DOM extensions to allow users to manipulate instances of these vocabularies using semantics appropriate to images and mathematics (respectively) as well as the generic DOM XML semantics. Instances of SVG or MathML are often embedded in XML documents conforming to a different schema such as XHTML. While the XML Namespaces Recommendation provides a mechanism for integrating these documents at the syntax level, it has become clear that the DOM Level 2 Recommendation [@@link] is not rich enough to cover all the issues that have been encountered in having these different DOM implementations be used together in a single application. DOM Level 3 deals with the requirements brought about by embedding fragments written according to a specific markup language (the embedded component) in a document where the rest of the markup is not written according to that specific markup language (the host document). It does not deal with fragments embedded by reference or linking. A DOM implementation supporting DOM Level 3 Core should be able to collaborate with subcomponents implementing specific DOMs to assemble a compound document that can be traversed and manipulated via DOM interfaces as if it were a seamless whole. The normal typecast operation on an object should support the interfaces expected by legacy code for a given document type. Typecasting techniques may not be adequate for selecting between multiple DOM specializations of an object which were combined at run time, because they may not all be part of the same object as defined by the binding's object model. Conflicts are most obvious with the Document object, since it is shared as owner by the rest of the document. In a homogeneous document, elements rely on the Document for specialized services and construction of specialized nodes. In a heterogeneous document, elements from different modules expect different services and APIs from the same Document object, since there can only be one owner and root of the document hierarchy. 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 [DOM Level 1], unless otherwise specified. (ED: change link to DOM Level 2 HTML when available) A DOM application may use the hasFeature(feature, version) method of the DOMImplementation interface with parameter values "Core" and "3.0" (respectively) to determine whether or not this module is supported by the implementation. Any implementation that conforms to DOM Level 3 or a DOM Level 3 module must conform to the Core module. 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 situations, such as out-of-bound errors when using NodeList. Implementations should raise other exceptions under other circumstances. For example, implementations should 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; // 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; Definition group ExceptionCode An integer indicating the type of error generated. Note: Other numeric codes are reserved for W3C for possible future use. Defined Constants 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 INDEX_SIZE_ERR If index or size is negative, or greater than the allowed value INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR If an attempt is made to add an attribute that is already in use elsewhere INVALID_ACCESS_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2. If a parameter or an operation is not supported by the underlying object. INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR If an invalid or illegal character is specified, such as in a name. See production 2 in the XML specification for the definition of a legal character, and production 5 for the definition of a legal name character. INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2. If an attempt is made to modify the type of the underlying object. INVALID_STATE_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2. If an attempt is made to use an object that is not, or is no longer, usable. NAMESPACE_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2. If an attempt is made to create or change an object in a way which is incorrect with regard to namespaces. NOT_FOUND_ERR If an attempt is made to reference a node in a context where it does not exist NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR If the implementation does not support the requested type of object or operation. NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR If data is specified for a node which does not support data NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR If an attempt is made to modify an object where modifications are not allowed SYNTAX_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2. If an invalid or illegal string is specified. WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR If a node is used in a different document than the one that created it (that doesn't support it) 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) raises(DOMException); // Introduced in DOM Level 2: Document createDocument(in DOMString namespaceURI, in DOMString qualifiedName, in DocumentType doctype) raises(DOMException); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: DOMImplementation getAs(in DOMString feature); }; Methods createDocument introduced in DOM Level 2 Creates a DOM Document object of the specified type with its document element. Parameters namespaceURI of type DOMString The namespace URI of the document element to create. qualifiedName of type DOMString The qualified name of the document element to be created. doctype of type DocumentType 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 INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name contains an illegal character. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, or if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" [Namespaces], or if the DOM implementation does not support the "XML" feature but a non-null namespace URI was provided, since namespaces were defined by XML. WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if doctype has already been used with a different document or was created from a different implementation. NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised by DOM implementations which do not support the "XML" feature, if they choose not to support this method. Note: Other features introduced in the future, by the DOM WG or in extensions defined by other groups, may also demand support for this method; please consult the definition of the feature to see if it requires this method. createDocumentType introduced in DOM Level 2 Creates an empty DocumentType 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. Parameters qualifiedName of type DOMString The qualified name of the document type to be created. publicId of type DOMString The external subset public identifier. systemId of type DOMString The external subset system identifier. Return Value DocumentType A new DocumentType node with Node.ownerDocument set to null. Exceptions DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name contains an illegal character. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed. NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised by DOM implementations which do not support the "XML" feature, if they choose not to support this method. Note: Other features introduced in the future, by the DOM WG or in extensions defined by other groups, may also demand support for this method; please consult the definition of the feature to see if it requires this method. getAs introduced in DOM Level 3 This method makes available a DOMImplementation's specialized interface (see Mutiple XML Datatypes in a DOM Document). Parameters feature of type DOMString The name of the feature requested (case-insensitive). Return Value DOMImplementation Returns an alternate DOMImplementation which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature, if any, or the current DOMImplementation if there is no alternate DOMImplementation object which implements interfaces associated with that feature. Any alternate DOMImplementation returned by this method must delegate to the primary core DOMImplementation and not return results inconsistent with the primary DOMImplementation No Exceptions hasFeature Test if the DOM implementation implements a specific feature. Parameters feature of type DOMString The name of the feature to test (case-insensitive). The values used by DOM features are defined throughout the DOM Level 2 specifications and listed in the Conformance (ED: Add link when available) section. The name must be an XML name. To avoid possible conflicts, as a convention, names referring to features defined outside the DOM specification should be made unique. version of type DOMString This is the version number of the feature to test. In Level 2, the string can be either "2.0" or "1.0". If the version is not specified, supporting any version of the feature causes the method to return true. Return Value boolean true if the feature is implemented in the specified version, false otherwise. No Exceptions 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); // Introduced in DOM Level 2: Element getElementById(in DOMString elementId); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: attribute DOMString actualEncoding; // Introduced in DOM Level 3: attribute DOMString encoding; // Introduced in DOM Level 3: attribute boolean standalone; // Introduced in DOM Level 3: attribute boolean strictErrorChecking; // Introduced in DOM Level 3: attribute DOMString version; // Introduced in DOM Level 3: Node adoptNode(in Node source) raises(DOMException); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: void setBaseURI(in DOMString baseURI) raises(DOMException); }; Attributes actualEncoding of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3 An attribute specifying the actual encoding of this document. This is null otherwise. 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. docType cannot be altered in any way, including through the use of methods inherited from the Node interface, such as insertNode or removeNode. 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". encoding of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3 An attribute specifying, as part of the XML declaration, the encoding of this document. This is null when unspecified. implementation of type DOMImplementation, readonly The DOMImplementation object that handles this document. A DOM application may use objects from multiple implementations. standalone of type boolean, introduced in DOM Level 3 An attribute specifying, as part of the XML declaration, whether this document is standalone. strictErrorChecking of type boolean, introduced in DOM Level 3 An attribute specifying whether errors checking is enforced or not. When set to false, the implementation is free to not test every possible error case normally defined on DOM operations, and not raise any DOMException. In case of error, the behavior is undefined. This attribute is true by defaults. version of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3 An attribute specifying, as part of the XML declaration, the version number of this document. This is null when unspecified. Methods adoptNode introduced in DOM Level 3 Changes the ownerDocument of a node, its children, as well as the attached attribute nodes if there are any. If the node has a parent it is first removed from its parent child list. This effectively allows moving a subtree from one document to another. The following list describes the specifics for each type of node. ATTRIBUTE_NODE The ownerElement attribute is set to null and the specified flag is set to true on the adopted Attr. The descendants of the source Attr are recursively adopted. DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE The descendants of the source node are recursively adopted. DOCUMENT_NODE Document nodes cannot be adopted. DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE DocumentType nodes cannot be adopted. ELEMENT_NODE Specified attribute nodes of the source element are adopted, and the generated Attr nodes. Default attributes are discarded, though if the document being adopted into defines default attributes for this element name, those are assigned. The descendants of the source element are recursively adopted. ENTITY_NODE Entity nodes cannot be adopted. ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE Only the EntityReference node itself is adopted, the descendants are discarded, 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_NODE Notation nodes cannot be adopted. PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE, TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE These nodes can all be adopted. No specifics. Issue adoptNode-1: Should this method simply return null when it fails? How "exceptional" is failure for this method? Resolution: Stick with raising exceptions only in exceptional circumstances, return null on failure (F2F 19 Jun 2000). Issue adoptNode-2: Can an entity node really be adopted? Resolution: No, neither can Notation nodes (Telcon 13 Dec 2000). Issue adoptNode-3: Does this affect keys and hashCode's of the adopted subtree nodes? If so, what about readonly-ness of key and hashCode? if not, would appendChild affect keys/hashCodes or would it generate exceptions if key's are duplicate? Update: Hashcodes have been dropped. Given that the key is only unique within a document an adopted node needs to be given a new key, but what does it mean for the application? Parameters source of type Node The node to move into this document. Return Value Node The adopted node, or null if this operation fails, such as when the source node comes from a different implementation. Exceptions DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the source node is of type DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT_TYPE. NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the source node is readonly. createAttribute Creates an Attr of the given name. Note that the Attr instance can then be set on an Element using the setAttributeNode method. To create an attribute with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the createAttributeNS method. Parameters name of type DOMString The name of the attribute. Return Value Attr A new Attr object with the nodeName attribute set to name, and localName, prefix, and namespaceURI set to null. The value of the attribute is the empty string. Exceptions DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character. createAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2 Creates an attribute of the given qualified name and namespace URI. Parameters namespaceURI of type DOMString The namespace URI of the attribute to create. qualifiedName of type DOMString 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.namespaceURInamespaceURI Node.prefix prefix, extracted from qualifiedName, or null if there is no prefix Node.localName local name, extracted from qualifiedName Attr.name qualifiedName Node.nodeValue the empty string Exceptions DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name contains an illegal character, per the XML 1.0 specification [XML]. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed per the Namespaces in XML specification, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", or if the qualifiedName, or its prefix, is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/". NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Always thrown if the current document does not support the "XML" feature, since namespaces were defined by XML. createCDATASection Creates a CDATASection node whose value is the specified string. Parameters data of type DOMString 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. createComment Creates a Comment node given the specified string. Parameters data of type DOMString The data for the node. Return Value Comment The new Comment object. No Exceptions createDocumentFragment Creates an empty DocumentFragment object. Return Value DocumentFragment A new DocumentFragment. No Parameters No Exceptions 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 tagName of type DOMString 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 with the nodeName attribute set to tagName, and localName, prefix, and namespaceURI set to null. Exceptions DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character. createElementNS introduced in DOM Level 2 Creates an element of the given qualified name and namespace URI. Parameters namespaceURI of type DOMString The namespace URI of the element to create. qualifiedName of type DOMString 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.namespaceURInamespaceURI 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 qualified name contains an illegal character, per the XML 1.0 specification [XML]. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed per the Namespaces in XML specification, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, or if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" [Namespaces]. NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Always thrown if the current document does not support the "XML" feature, since namespaces were defined by XML. createEntityReference Creates an EntityReference 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. Parameters name of type DOMString 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 illegal character. NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document. createProcessingInstruction Creates a ProcessingInstruction node given the specified name and data strings. Parameters target of type DOMString The target part of the processing instruction. data of type DOMString The data for the node. Return Value ProcessingInstruction The new ProcessingInstruction object. Exceptions DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified target contains an illegal character. NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document. createTextNode Creates a Text node given the specified string. Parameters data of type DOMString The data for the node. Return Value Text The new Text object. No Exceptions getElementById introduced in DOM Level 2 Returns the Element 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. Parameters elementId of type DOMString The unique id value for an element. Return Value Element The matching element. No Exceptions getElementsByTagName Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given tag name in the order in which they are encountered in a preorder traversal of the Document tree. Parameters tagname of type DOMString 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 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 are encountered in a preorder traversal of the Document tree. Parameters namespaceURI of type DOMString The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all namespaces. localName of type DOMString 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 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, localName, and namespaceURI). 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 each type of node. ATTRIBUTE_NODE The 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. Note that the deep parameter has no effect on Attr nodes; they always carry their children with them when imported. DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE If the deep option was set to true, the descendants of the source element are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree. Otherwise, this simply generates an empty DocumentFragment. DOCUMENT_NODE Document nodes cannot be imported. DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE DocumentType nodes cannot be imported. 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 the importNode deep parameter was set to true, the descendants of the source element are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree. 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 are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree. 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. NOTATION_NODE 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. On import, the publicId and systemId attributes are copied. Note that the deep parameter has no effect on Notation nodes since they never have any children. PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE The imported node copies its target and data values from those of the source node. 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. Parameters importedNode of type Node The node to import. deep of type boolean If true, 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. 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. setBaseURI introduced in DOM Level 3 Set the baseURI attribute from the Node interface. If the document is [HTML4.0], [XHTML1.0], or [XHTML1.1], the href attribute of the base will also be changed if any. Parameters baseURI of type DOMString The new absolute URI for this document. Exceptions DOMException SYNTAX_ERR: Raised if baseURI is not an absolute URI per [RFC2396]. No Return Value 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); // Modified in DOM Level 2: void normalize(); // Introduced in DOM Level 2: boolean isSupported(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; // Introduced in DOM Level 2: boolean hasAttributes(); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: readonly attribute DOMString baseURI; enum DocumentOrder { DOCUMENT_ORDER_PRECEDING, DOCUMENT_ORDER_FOLLOWING, DOCUMENT_ORDER_SAME, DOCUMENT_ORDER_UNORDERED }; // Introduced in DOM Level 3: DocumentOrder compareDocumentOrder(in Node other) raises(DOMException); enum TreePosition { TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING, TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING, TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR, TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT, TREE_POSITION_SAME, TREE_POSITION_UNORDERED }; // Introduced in DOM Level 3: TreePosition compareTreePosition(in Node other) raises(DOMException); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: attribute DOMString textContent; // Introduced in DOM Level 3: boolean isSameNode(in Node other); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: DOMString lookupNamespacePrefix(in DOMString namespaceURI); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: DOMString lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString prefix); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: void normalizeNS(); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: readonly attribute DOMKey key; // Introduced in DOM Level 3: boolean equalsNode(in Node arg, in boolean deep); // Introduced in DOM Level 3: Node getAs(in DOMString feature); }; Definition group NodeType An integer indicating which type of node this is. Note: Numeric codes up to 200 are reserved to W3C for possible future use. Defined Constants ATTRIBUTE_NODE The node is an Attr. CDATA_SECTION_NODE The node is a CDATASection. COMMENT_NODE The node is a Comment. DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE The node is a DocumentFragment. DOCUMENT_NODE The node is a Document. DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE The node is a DocumentType. ELEMENT_NODE The node is an Element. ENTITY_NODE The node is an Entity. ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE The node is an EntityReference. NOTATION_NODE The node is a Notation. PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE The node is a ProcessingInstruction. TEXT_NODE The node is a Text node. The values of nodeName, nodeValue, and attributes vary according to the node type as follows: Interface nodeName nodeValue attributes Attr name of attribute value of null attribute CDATASection "#cdata-section" content of null the CDATA Section Comment "#comment" content of null the comment 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 null null referenced Notation notation name null null ProcessingInstructiontarget entire null content excluding the target Text "#text" content of null the text node Type Definition DocumentOrder A type to hold the document order of a node relative to another node. Enumeration _DocumentOrder An enumeration of the different orders the node can be in. Enumerator Values The node preceds the DOCUMENT_ORDER_PRECEDING reference node in document order. The node follows the DOCUMENT_ORDER_FOLLOWING reference node in document order. The two nodes have DOCUMENT_ORDER_SAME the same document order. The two nodes are DOCUMENT_ORDER_UNORDERED unordered, they do not have any common ancestor. Type Definition TreePosition A type to hold the relative tree position of a node with respect to another node. Enumeration _TreePosition An enumeration of the different orders the node can be in. Enumerator Values TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING The node preceds the reference node. TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING The node follows the reference node. The node is an TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR ancestor of the reference node. The node is a TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT descendant of the reference node. TREE_POSITION_SAME The two nodes have the same position. The two nodes are TREE_POSITION_UNORDERED unordered, they do not have any common ancestor. Attributes attributes of type NamedNodeMap, readonly A NamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it is an Element) or null otherwise. baseURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3 Returns the absolute base URI of this node. This value is computed according to XML Base. Issue baseURI-1: How will this be affected by resolution of relative namespace URIs issue? Resolution: It's not. Issue baseURI-2: Should this only be on Document, Element, ProcessingInstruction, Entity, and Notation nodes, according to the infoset? If not, what is it equal to on other nodes? Null? An empty string? I think it should be the parent's. Issue baseURI-3: Should this be read-only and computed or and actual read-write attribute? Resolution: Read-only and computed (F2F 19 Jun 2000). 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. firstChild of type Node, readonly The first child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null. key of type DOMKey, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3 This attribute returns a key identifying this node. This key is unique within the document this node was created from and is valid for the lifetime of that document. Issue key-1: What type should this really be? Resolution: DOMKey, mapped to Object in Java and Number in ECMAScript (Telcon 13 Dec 2000). Issue key-2: In what space is this key unique (Document, DOMImplementation)? Resolution: Document (F2F 27 Sep 2000). Issue key-3: What is the lifetime of the uniqueness of this key (Node, Document, ...)? Resolution: Document (F2F 2 Mar 2001). lastChild of type Node, readonly The last child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null. localName of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2 Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node. For nodes of any type other than 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. namespaceURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2 The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified. 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 of any type other than 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, readonly The node immediately following this node. If there is no such node, this returns null. nodeName of type DOMString, readonly The name of this node, depending on its type; see the table above. nodeType of type unsigned short, readonly A code representing the type of the underlying object, as defined 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. 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. 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. prefix of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 2 The namespace prefix of this node, or null if it is unspecified. Note that setting this attribute, when permitted, 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. Note also that changing the prefix of an attribute that is known to have a default value, does not make a new attribute with the default value and the original prefix appear, since the namespaceURI and localName do not change. For nodes of any type other than 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. Exceptions on setting DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified prefix contains an illegal character, per the XML 1.0 specification [XML]. NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the specified prefix is malformed per the Namespaces in XML specification, if the namespaceURI of this node is null, if the specified prefix is "xml" and the namespaceURI of this node is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", if this node is an attribute and the specified prefix is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI of this node is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/", or if this node is an attribute and the qualifiedName of this node is "xmlns" [Namespaces]. previousSibling of type Node, readonly The node immediately preceding this node. If there is no such node, this returns null. textContent of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3 This attribute returns the text content of this node and its descendants. When set, any possible children this node may have are removed and replaced by a single Text node containing the string this attribute is set to. On getting, no serialization is performed, the returned string does not contain any markup. Similarly, on setting, no parsing is performed either, the input string is taken as pure textual content. The string returned is made of the text content of this node depending on its type, as defined below: Node type Content ELEMENT_NODE, ENTITY_NODE, concatenation of the ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE, textContent attribute value DOCUMENT_NODE, of every child node, DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE excluding COMMENT_NODE and PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE nodes ATTRIBUTE_NODE, TEXT_NODE, nodeValue CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE, empty string NOTATION_NODE Issue textContent-1: Should any whitespace normalization be performed? MS' text property doesn't but what about "ignorable whitespace"? Issue textContent-2: Should this be two methods instead? Issue textContent-3: What about the name? MS uses text and innerText. text conflicts with HTML DOM. Issue textContent-4: Should this be optional? Issue textContent-5: Setting the text property on a Document, Document Type, or Notation node is an error for MS. How do we expose it? Exception? Which one? Methods 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 newChild of type Node 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 or this node itself. 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 or if the previous parent of the node being inserted is readonly. cloneNode Returns a duplicate of this node, i.e., serves as a generic copy constructor for nodes. The duplicate node has no parent; (parentNode is 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 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. Note that cloning an immutable subtree results in a mutable copy, but the children of an EntityReference clone are readonly. In addition, clones of unspecified Attr nodes are specified. And, cloning Document, DocumentType, Entity, and Notation nodes is implementation dependent. Parameters deep of type boolean 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 compareDocumentOrder introduced in DOM Level 3 Compares a node with this node with regard to document order. Issue compareOrder-1: Should an exception be raised when comparing attributes? Entities and notations? An element against an attribute? If yes, which one? HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR? Should the enum value "unordered" be killed then? Resolution: No, return unordered for attributes (F2F 19 Jun 2000). Issue compareOrder-2: Should this method be moved to Node and take only one node in argument? Resolution: Yes (F2F 19 Jun 2000). Issue compareOrder-3: Should this method be optional? Parameters other of type Node The node to compare against this node. Return Value DocumentOrder Returns how the given node compares with this node in document order. Exceptions DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if the given node does not belong to the same document as this node. compareTreePosition introduced in DOM Level 3 Compares a node with this node with regard to their position in the tree. Issue compareTreePosition-1: Should this method be optional? Parameters other of type Node The node to compare against this node. Return Value TreePosition Returns how the given node is positioned relatively to this node. Exceptions DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if the given node does not belong to the same document as this node. equalsNode introduced in DOM Level 3 Tests whether two nodes are equal. This method tests for equality of nodes, not sameness (i.e., whether the two nodes are exactly the same object) which can be tested with Node.isSameNode. All objects that are the same will also be equal, though the reverse may not be true. Issue equalsNode-1: Should this be optional? Parameters arg of type Node The node to compare equality with. deep of type boolean If true, recursively compare the subtrees; if false, compare only the nodes themselves (and its attributes, if it is an Element). Return Value boolean If the nodes, and possibly subtrees are equal, true otherwise false. No Exceptions getAs introduced in DOM Level 3 This method makes available a Node's specialized interface (see Mutiple XML Datatypes in a DOM Document). Issue EDOM-isSupported: What are the relations between Node.isSupported and Node3.getAs? Parameters feature of type DOMString The name of the feature requested (case-insensitive). Return Value Node Returns an alternate Node which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature, if any, or the current Node if there is no alternate Node which implements interfaces associated with that feature. Any alternate Node returned by this method must delegate to the primary core Node and not return results inconsistent with the primary core Node such as key, attributes, childNodes, etc. No Exceptions hasAttributes introduced in DOM Level 2 Returns whether this node (if it is an element) has any attributes. Return Value boolean true if this node has any attributes, false otherwise. No Parameters No Exceptions hasChildNodes Returns whether this node has any children. Return Value boolean true if this node has any children, false otherwise. No Parameters No Exceptions 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 newChild of type Node The node to insert. refChild of type Node 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 or this node itself. 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 or if the parent of the node being inserted is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if refChild is not a child of this node. isSameNode introduced in DOM Level 3 Returns whether this node is the same node as the given one. Issue isSameNode-1: Do we really want to make this different from equals? Resolution: Yes, change name from isIdentical to isSameNode. (Telcon 4 Jul 2000). Issue isSameNode-2: Is this really needed if we provide a unique key? Resolution: Yes, because the key is only unique within a document. (F2F 2 Mar 2001). Issue isSameNode-3: Definition of 'sameness' is needed. Parameters other of type Node The node to test against. Return Value boolean Returns true if the nodes are the same, false otherwise. No Exceptions isSupported introduced in DOM Level 2 Tests whether the DOM implementation implements a specific feature and that feature is supported by this node. Parameters feature of type DOMString The name of the feature to test. This is the same name which can be passed to the method hasFeature on DOMImplementation. version of type DOMString This is the version number of the feature 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 the specified feature is supported on this node, false otherwise. No Exceptions lookupNamespacePrefix introduced in DOM Level 3 Look up the prefix associated to the given namespace URI, starting from this node. Issue lookupNamespacePrefix-1: Should this be optional? Issue lookupNamespacePrefix-2: How does the lookup work? Is it based on the prefix of the nodes, the namespace declaration attributes, or a combination of both? Parameters namespaceURI of type DOMString The namespace URI to look for. Return Value DOMString Returns the associated namespace prefix or null if none is found. No Exceptions lookupNamespaceURI introduced in DOM Level 3 Look up the namespace URI associated to the given prefix, starting from this node. Issue lookupNamespaceURI-1: Name? May need to change depending on ending of the relative namespace URI reference nightmare. Resolution: No need. Issue lookupNamespaceURI-2: Should this be optional? Issue lookupNamespaceURI-3: How does the lookup work? Is it based on the namespaceURI of the nodes, the namespace declaration attributes, or a combination of both? Here is a proposal: // Note that lookupNamespacePrefix is virtual identical to this // method; just reverse which fields are being tested/returned. DOMString Element.lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString prefix) { if this Element has a namespace and its prefix is the one we're looking for return this Element's namespace else if this element has an explicit namespace declaration Attr (with namespace=="http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and either the prefix "xmlns:" or the nodeName "xmlns") for the specified prefix return that Attr's value. else if this Element has an ancestor Element (you may have to skip EntityReferences to get to it) return parent.lookupNamespaceURI(prefix) else return unknown (null) } Parameters prefix of type DOMString The prefix to look for. Return Value DOMString Returns the associated namespace URI or null if none is found. No Exceptions normalize modified in DOM Level 2 Puts all Text 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 [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. No Parameters No Return Value No Exceptions normalizeNS introduced in DOM Level 3 This method walks down the tree, starting from this node, and adds namespace declarations where needed so that every namespace being used is properly declared. It also changes or assign prefixes when needed. This effectively makes this node subtree is "namespace wellformed". What the generated prefixes are and/or how prefixes are changed to achieve this is implementation dependent. Issue normalizeNS-1: Any other name? Joe proposes normalizeNamespaces. Issue normalizeNS-2: How specific should this be? Should we not even specify that this should be done by walking down the tree? Here is a proposal: void Element.normalizeNamespaces() { Determine namespaces inherited from myElement's ancestors, using the same search as Element3.lookupNamespacePrefix() and Element3.lookupNamespaceURI() // This will probably require an upward search when the // operation is initially invoked by the user, but thereafter can be // information carried downward as we recurse to deeper Elements. //////// EXAMINE AND POLISH THE ELEMENT //////// If myElement has a namespace URI { // Should be possible to combine this test into the lookup/definition // stages, to reduce rechecking of URIs already examined: If the NSURI is not syntactically valid { Report error // ISSUE: Continue processing as if it were valid? Stop processing? // (If we're using the AS/LS error mechanism, we could let the user's // error handler decide this... but we need to decide what severity // to assign it.) } If myElement's prefix/namespace pair (or default namespace, if no prefix) are not already within the scope of a binding (local declaration, then inherited) { Create a local namespace declaration attr for this namespace, with myElement's current prefix (or a default namespace, if no prefix). If there's a conflicting local declaration already present, change its value to use this namespace. // NOTE that this may break other nodes within this Element's // subtree, if they're already using this prefix. // They will be repaired when we reach them. } } // end namespaced Element else if Element has no namespace but has a colon in its name { // ISSUE: WHAT DO WE DO WITH THESE LEVEL 1 ELEMENTS? // // Option 1: Ignore them. Undesirable since our goal is to // produce a document that is namespace-well-formed. // // Option 2: Replace them with level 2 nodes and bind their // prefixes using the existing namespace contexts. That means // significant alteration of document structure (a problem if // anyone has references to or event listeners on this Element). // [Joe doesn't like it.] // // Option 3: Report them as a namespace normalization error // and _then_ ignore them. "Anyone who cares about namespace // support really shouldn't be using Level 1 nodes, and can go // fix it themselves." // // Option 4: Like option 3, but report an error only if we are not // within the scope of an existing declaration of the prefix. (We // can't check what it should be declared as, but we can check that // it is declared as something.) } // end level-1-with-colon Else // Element has no namespace URI and no pseudo-prefix { If the Default Namespace in scope at this point is "no namespace" { // we're fine as we stand } else { Create a local xmlns="" declaration. If there's a conflicting local default-namespace declaration already present, change its value to use this namespace. // NOTE that this may break other nodes within this Element's // subtree, if they're already using the default namespaces. // They will be repaired when we reach them. } } //////// EXAMINE AND POLISH THE ATTRS //////// For all Attrs of myElement { If Attr has a namespace URI { If the NSURI is not syntactically valid { Report error. (See above discussion.) } If Attr has no prefix, or has a prefix that conflicts with a binding already active in this scope { If myElement is in the scope (inherited or local) of a NON-DEFAULT binding for this namespace { If multiple prefix bindings are available, pick the one most locally defined; if there's a tie, pick one arbitrarily. // ISSUE: Do we want to be that explicit? Change the Attr to use that prefix. } else { Create a local namespace declaration attr for this namespace, with an arbitrarily selected prefix not already used in our current namespace scope. Change the Attr to use this prefix. // NOTE that this may break other nodes within this Element's // subtree, if they're already using this prefix. // They will be repaired when we reach them. // ISSUE: Do we want to explicitly say which "arbitrary" // prefixes will be assigned? (DOMImplied17: or something // of that sort...) Or is this best left to the implementation, // since it's officially Not Significant? } } // end prefix-doesn't-match else if namespace is "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/", but attribute does not have the prefix "xmlns:" or the nodeName "xmlns" { // Yes, this can arise in the DOM. We only check for the opposite // case, assigning the wrong URI to an attribute whose name says // it should be a namespace declaration... not the reverse. // // While all Namespace Declarations belong to a // reserved NSURI, it is apparently _not_ true that all attributes // having that NSURI are to be considered Namespace Declarations. // According to the namespace spec, only "xmlns" and names having // the xmlns: prefix should be interpreted as declarations. So: if there is a NON-DEFAULT binding for this namespace in scope with a prefix other than "xmlns" { Change the Attr to use that prefix. If multiple choices are available, pick one arbitrarily. // ISSUE: Should we favor the "most locally defined" prefix? // Or leave that up to the implementation?) } else { Create a local namespace declaration attr for this namespace, with an arbitrarily selected prefix not already used in our current namespace scope. Change the Attr to use this prefix. } } // end non-namespace-decl with namespace-decl URI } // end namespaced Attr Else if attr has no namespace but has colon in its name { // ISSUE: WHAT DO WE DO WITH THESE LEVEL 1 ATTRS? // See above discussion of Level 1 Elements } // end level-1-attr-with-colon Else // attr has no namespace URI and no prefix { // we're fine as we stand, since attrs don't use default } } // end for-all-Attrs //////// RECURSE OR TREE-WALK TO NORMALIZE THE DESCENDENT ELEMENTS // ISSUE: Will we ever want to fix only one element? If so, // we may want a parameter saying deep/shallow, as // on cloneNode/importNode. For all element descendents of myElement { descendentElement.normalizeNamespaces() } } // end Element3.normalizeNamespaces Issue normalizeNS-3: What does this do on attribute nodes? Resolution: Doesn't do anything (F2F 1 Aug 2000). Issue normalizeNS-4: How does it work with entity reference subtree which may be broken? Resolution: This doesn't affect entity references which are not visited in this operation (F2F 1 Aug 2000). Issue normalizeNS-5: Should this really be on Node? Resolution: Yes, but this only works on Document, Element, and DocumentFragment. On other types it is a no-op. (F2F 1 Aug 2000). Issue normalizeNS-6: What happens with read-only nodes? Issue normalizeNS-7: What/how errors should be reported? Are there any? Issue normalizeNS-8: Should this be optional? No Parameters No Return Value No Exceptions removeChild Removes the child node indicated by oldChild from the list of children, and returns it. Parameters oldChild of type Node 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. replaceChild Replaces the child node oldChild with newChild in the list of children, and returns the oldChild node. If 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. Parameters newChild of type Node The new node to put in the child list. oldChild of type Node 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 if the node to put in is one of this node's ancestors or this node itself. 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 or the parent of the new node is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldChild is not a child of this node. Interface NodeList 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. 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 index of type unsigned long 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. NamedNodeMap objects in the DOM are live. 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 setNamedItemNS(in Node arg) raises(DOMException); // Introduced in DOM Level 2: Node removeNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, in DOMString localName) raises(DOMException); }; Attributes length of type unsigned long, readonly The number of nodes in this map. The range of valid child node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive. Methods getNamedItem Retrieves a node specified by name. Parameters name of type DOMString The nodeName of a node to retrieve. Return Value Node A Node (of any type) with the specified nodeName, or null if it does not identify any node in this map. No Exceptions getNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2 Retrieves a node specified by local name and namespace URI. Documents which do not support the "XML" feature will permit only the DOM Level 1 calls for creating/setting elements and attributes. Hence, if you specify a non-null namespace URI, these DOMs will never find a matching node. Parameters namespaceURI of type DOMString The namespace URI of the node to retrieve. localName of type DOMString The local name of the node to retrieve. Return Value Node A Node (of any type) with the specified local name and namespace URI, or null if they do not identify any node in this map. No Exceptions item Returns the indexth item in the map. If index is greater than or equal to the number of nodes in this map, this returns null. Parameters index of type unsigned long Index into this map. Return Value Node The node at the indexth position in the map, or null if that is not a valid index. No Exceptions removeNamedItem Removes a node specified by name. When this map contains the attributes attached to an element, if the removed attribute is known to have a default value, an attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when app