W3C

Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification

Version 1.0

W3C Working Draft 09 April 2002

This version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20020409
( 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/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20020114
Editors:
Arnaud Le Hors, IBM
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C, WG Chair
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad, Inc. (WG Chair emerata, for DOM Level 1 and 2)
Gavin Nicol, Inso EPS (for DOM Level 1)
Jonathan Robie, Texcel Research and Software AG (for DOM Level 1)
Mike Champion, ArborText and Software AG (for DOM Level 1 from November 20, 1997)
Steve Byrne, JavaSoft (for DOM Level 1 until November 19, 1997)

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 [DOM Level 2 Core].

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 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 Working Group members.

A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.

Table of contents

09 April 2002

Expanded Table of Contents

09 April 2002

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2002 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. The software license requires "Notice of any changes or modifications to the W3C files, including the date changes were made." Consequently, modified versions of the DOM bindings must document that they do not conform to the W3C standard; in the case of the IDL definitions, the pragma prefix can no longer be 'w3c.org'; in the case of the Java language binding, the package names can no longer be in the 'org.w3c' package.


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09 April 2002

What is the Document Object Model?

Editors:
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc. (for DOM Level 2)
Jonathan Robie, Texcel (for DOM Level 1)

Introduction

The Document Object Model (DOM) is an application programming interface (API) for valid HTML and well-formed XML documents. It defines the logical structure of documents and the way a document is accessed and manipulated. In the DOM specification, the term "document" is used in the broad sense - increasingly, XML is being used as a way of representing many different kinds of information that may be stored in diverse systems, and much of this would traditionally be seen as data rather than as documents. Nevertheless, XML presents this data as documents, and the DOM may be used to manage this data.

With the Document Object Model, programmers can build documents, navigate their structure, and add, modify, or delete elements and content. Anything found in an HTML or XML document can be accessed, changed, deleted, or added using the Document Object Model, with a few exceptions - in particular, the DOM interfaces for the XML internal and external subsets have not yet been specified.

As a W3C specification, one important objective for the Document Object Model is to provide a standard programming interface that can be used in a wide variety of environments and applications. The DOM is designed to be used with any programming language. In order to provide a precise, language-independent specification of the DOM interfaces, we have chosen to define the specifications in Object Management Group (OMG) IDL [OMG IDL], as defined in the CORBA 2.3.1 specification [CORBA]. In addition to the OMG IDL specification, we provide language bindings for Java [Java] and ECMAScript [ECMAScript] (an industry-standard scripting language based on JavaScript [JavaScript] and JScript [JScript]).

Note: OMG IDL is used only as a language-independent and implementation-neutral way to specify interfaces. Various other IDLs could have been used ([COM], [Java IDL], [MIDL], ...). In general, IDLs are designed for specific computing environments. The Document Object Model can be implemented in any computing environment, and does not require the object binding runtimes generally associated with such IDLs.

What the Document Object Model is

The DOM is a programming API for documents. It is based on an object structure that closely resembles the structure of the documents it models. For instance, consider this table, taken from an HTML document:

      <TABLE>
      <TBODY> 
      <TR> 
      <TD>Shady Grove</TD>
      <TD>Aeolian</TD> 
      </TR> 
      <TR>
      <TD>Over the River, Charlie</TD>        
      <TD>Dorian</TD> 
      </TR> 
      </TBODY>
      </TABLE>
   

A graphical representation of the DOM of the example table is:


graphical representation of the DOM of the example table
graphical representation of the DOM of the example table

In the DOM, documents have a logical structure which is very much like a tree; to be more precise, which is like a "forest" or "grove", which can contain more than one tree. Each document contains zero or one doctype nodes, one document element node, and zero or more comments or processing instructions; the document element serves as the root of the element tree for the document. However, the DOM does not specify that documents must be implemented as a tree or a grove, nor does it specify how the relationships among objects be implemented. The DOM is a logical model that may be implemented in any convenient manner. In this specification, we use the term structure model to describe the tree-like representation of a document. We also use the term "tree" when referring to the arrangement of those information items which can be reached by using "tree-walking" methods; (this does not include attributes). One important property of DOM structure models is structural isomorphism: if any two Document Object Model implementations are used to create a representation of the same document, they will create the same structure model, in accordance with the XML Information Set [XML Information set].

Note: There may be some variations depending on the parser being used to build the DOM. For instance, the DOM may not contain white spaces in element content if the parser discards them.

The name "Document Object Model" was chosen because it is an "object model" in the traditional object oriented design sense: documents are modeled using objects, and the model encompasses not only the structure of a document, but also the behavior of a document and the objects of which it is composed. In other words, the nodes in the above diagram do not represent a data structure, they represent objects, which have functions and identity. As an object model, the DOM identifies:

The structure of SGML documents has traditionally been represented by an abstract data model, not by an object model. In an abstract data model, the model is centered around the data. In object oriented programming languages, the data itself is encapsulated in objects that hide the data, protecting it from direct external manipulation. The functions associated with these objects determine how the objects may be manipulated, and they are part of the object model.

What the Document Object Model is not

This section is designed to give a more precise understanding of the DOM by distinguishing it from other systems that may seem to be like it.

Where the Document Object Model came from

The DOM originated as a specification to allow JavaScript scripts and Java programs to be portable among Web browsers. "Dynamic HTML" was the immediate ancestor of the Document Object Model, and it was originally thought of largely in terms of browsers. However, when the DOM Working Group was formed at W3C, it was also joined by vendors in other domains, including HTML or XML editors and document repositories. Several of these vendors had worked with SGML before XML was developed; as a result, the DOM has been influenced by SGML Groves and the HyTime standard. Some of these vendors had also developed their own object models for documents in order to provide an API for SGML/XML editors or document repositories, and these object models have also influenced the DOM.

Entities and the DOM Core

In the fundamental DOM interfaces, there are no objects representing entities. Numeric character references, and references to the pre-defined entities in HTML and XML, are replaced by the single character that makes up the entity's replacement. For example, in:

        <p>This is a dog &amp; a cat</p>        
     

the "&amp;" will be replaced by the character "&", and the text in the P element will form a single continuous sequence of characters. Since numeric character references and pre-defined entities are not recognized as such in CDATA sections, or in the SCRIPT and STYLE elements in HTML, they are not replaced by the single character they appear to refer to. If the example above were enclosed in a CDATA section, the "&amp;" would not be replaced by "&"; neither would the <p> be recognized as a start tag. The representation of general entities, both internal and external, are defined within the extended (XML) interfaces of Document Object Model Core.

Note: When a DOM representation of a document is serialized as XML or HTML text, applications will need to check each character in text data to see if it needs to be escaped using a numeric or pre-defined entity. Failing to do so could result in invalid HTML or XML. Also, implementations should be aware of the fact that serialization into a character encoding ("charset") that does not fully cover ISO 10646 may fail if there are characters in markup or CDATA sections that are not present in the encoding.

Conformance

This section explains the different levels of conformance to DOM Level 3. DOM Level 3 consists of ? modules. It is possible to conform to DOM Level 3, or to a DOM Level 3 module.

An implementation is DOM Level 3 conformant if it supports the Core module defined in this document (see Fundamental Interfaces). An implementation conforms to a DOM Level 3 module if it supports all the interfaces for that module and the associated semantics.

Here is the complete list of DOM Level 3.0 modules and the features used by them. Feature names are case-insensitive.

Core module
defines the feature "Core".
XML module
Defines the feature "XML".
Events module
defines the feature "Events" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
User interface Events module
defines the feature "UIEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
Mouse Events module
defines the feature "MouseEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
Text Events module
defines the feature "TextEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
Mutation Events module
defines the feature "MutationEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
HTML Events module
defines the feature "HTMLEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
Load and Save module
defines the feature "LS" in [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save].
Abstract Schemas Editing module
defines the feature "AS-EDIT" in [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save].
XPath module
defines the feature "XPath" in [DOM Level 3 XPath].

A DOM implementation must not return true to the hasFeature(feature, version) method of the DOMImplementation interface for that feature unless the implementation conforms to that module. The version number for all features used in DOM Level 3.0 is "3.0".

DOM Interfaces and DOM Implementations

The DOM specifies interfaces which may be used to manage XML or HTML documents. It is important to realize that these interfaces are an abstraction - much like "abstract base classes" in C++, they are a means of specifying a way to access and manipulate an application's internal representation of a document. Interfaces do not imply a particular concrete implementation. Each DOM application is free to maintain documents in any convenient representation, as long as the interfaces shown in this specification are supported. Some DOM implementations will be existing programs that use the DOM interfaces to access software written long before the DOM specification existed. Therefore, the DOM is designed to avoid implementation dependencies; in particular,

  1. Attributes defined in the IDL do not imply concrete objects which must have specific data members - in the language bindings, they are translated to a pair of get()/set() functions, not to a data member. Read-only attributes have only a get() function in the language bindings.
  2. DOM applications may provide additional interfaces and objects not found in this specification and still be considered DOM conformant.
  3. Because we specify interfaces and not the actual objects that are to be created, the DOM cannot know what constructors to call for an implementation. In general, DOM users call the createX() methods on the Document class to create document structures, and DOM implementations create their own internal representations of these structures in their implementations of the createX() functions.

The Level 2 interfaces were extended to provide both Level 2 and Level 3 functionality.

DOM implementations in languages other than Java or ECMAScript may choose bindings that are appropriate and natural for their language and run time environment. For example, some systems may need to create a Document3 class which inherits from a Document class and contains the new methods and attributes.

DOM Level 3 does not specify multithreading mechanisms.

09 April 2002

1. Document Object Model Core

Editors:
Arnaud Le Hors, IBM
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C
Gavin Nicol, Inso EPS (for DOM Level 1)
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad, Inc. (for DOM Level 1)
Mike Champion, ArborText and Software AG (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

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:

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<unsigned short>;

Applications must encode DOMString using UTF-16 (defined in [Unicode 2.0] 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/IEC 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 ([OMG IDL]) 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 DOMUserData type

To ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:

Type Definition DOMUserData

A DOMUserData represents a reference to an application object.


IDL Definition
typedef Object DOMUserData;

Note: Even though the DOM uses the type DOMUserData, bindings may use different types. For example, in Java DOMUserData is bound to the Object type, while in ECMAScript DOMUserData is bound to any type.

Issue DOMKeyObject-1:
What does DOMUserData map to in ECMAScript?
Resolution: "any type"

1.1.8. The DOMObject type

To ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:

Type Definition DOMObject

A DOMObject represents a reference to an application object.


IDL Definition
typedef Object DOMObject;

Note: Even though the DOM uses the type DOMObject, bindings may use different types. For example, in Java and ECMAScript DOMObject is bound to the Object type.

1.1.9. 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.

The W3C Text normalization, as defined in [CharModel], is assumed to happen at serialization time. The DOM Level 3 Load and Save module [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save] provides a serialization mechanism (see the DOMWriter interface, section 2.3.1) and defines the "ls-normalize-characters" to assure that text is serialized in the W3C Text Normalization form. Other serialization mechanisms built on top of the DOM Level 3 Core also have to assure that text is serialized in the W3C Text Normalization form.

(ED: We need to review the case sensitivity of methods and attributes and how it fits with XML and HTML. Current wording is not clear at all ... )

1.1.10. XML Namespaces

The DOM Level 2 (and higher) supports XML namespaces [XML 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.

In general, the DOM implementation (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 white spaces 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. Applications that wish to have no namespace should use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter of methods. If they pass an empty string the DOM implementation turns it into a null.

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 [XML 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: Given that the property [in-scope namespaces] defined in [XML Information set] is not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core, the properties [prefix] and [namespace name] defined by the Namespace Information Item in [XML Information set] are not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core. However, [DOM Level 3 XPath] does provide a way to access them.

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.

1.1.11. Mixed DOM implementations

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 [MathML 2.0] and SVG [SVG 1.0] 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 [DOM Level 2 Core] 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.

1.1.12. Bootstrapping

Because previous versions of the DOM specification only defined a set of interfaces, applications had to rely on some implementation dependent code to start from. However, hard-coding the application to a specific implementation prevents the application from running on other implementations and from using the most-suitable implementation of the environment. At the same time, implementations may also need to load modules or perform other setup to efficiently adapt to different and sometimes mutually-exclusive feature sets.

To solve these problems this specification introduces a DOMImplementationRegistry object with a function that lets an application find an implementation, based on the specific features it requires. How this object is found and what it exactly looks like is not defined here, because this cannot be done in a language-independent manner. Instead, each language binding defines its own way of doing this. See Java Language Binding and ECMAScript Language Binding for specifics.

In all cases, though, the DOMImplementationRegistry provides a getDOMImplementation method accepting a features string, which is passed to every known DOMImplementationSource until a suitable DOMImplementation is found and returned. This method is the same as the one found on the DOMImplementationSource interface defined below.

Any number of DOMImplementationSource objects can be registered. A source may return one or more DOMImplementation singletons or construct new DOMImplementation objects, depending upon whether the requested features require specialized state in the DOMImplementation object.

Issue Level-3-Bootstrap-1:
Is this not generic enough?
Resolution: Yes. (F2F 31 Jul 2001)
Issue Level-3-Bootstrap-2:
Should the method getDOMImplementation be called byFeature instead?
Resolution: No. (F2F 31 Jul 2001)

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 2 HTML], unless otherwise specified.

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. Please refer to additional information about conformance in this specification. The DOM Level 3 Core module is backward compatible with the DOM Level 2 Core [DOM Level 2 Core] module, i.e. a DOM Level 3 Core implementation who returns true for "Core" with the version number "3.0" must also return true for this feature when the version number is "2.0", "" or, null.

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 when null was not expected.

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;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
const unsigned short      VALIDATION_ERR                 = 16;

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.
VALIDATION_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 3.
If a call to a method such as insertBefore or removeChild would make the Node invalid with respect to "partial validity", this exception would be raised and the operation would not be done. This code is used in [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save]. Refer to this specification for further information.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
If a node is used in a different document than the one that created it (that doesn't support it)
Interface DOMImplementationSource

This interface permits a DOM implementer to supply one or more implementations, based upon requested features. Each implemented DOMImplementationSource object is listed in the binding-specific list of available sources so that its DOMImplementation objects are made available.


IDL Definition

Methods
getDOMImplementation
A method to request a DOM implementation.
Parameters
features of type DOMString
A string that specifies which features are required. This is a space separated list in which each feature is specified by its name optionally followed by a space and a version number. This is something like: "XML 1.0 Traversal Events 2.0"
Return Value

DOMImplementation

An implementation that has the desired features, or null if this source has none.

No Exceptions
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  getInterface(in DOMString feature);
};

Methods
createDocument introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates a DOM Document object of the specified type with its document element.
Note that based on the DocumentType given to create the document, the implementation may instantiate specialized Document objects that support additional features than the "Core", such as "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML]. On the other hand, setting the DocumentType after the document was created makes this very unlikely to happen. Alternatively, specialized Document creation methods, such as createHTMLDocument [DOM Level 2 HTML], can be used to obtain specific types of Document objects.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the document element to create or null.
qualifiedName of type DOMString
The qualified name of the document element to be created or null.
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 with its document element. If the NamespaceURI, qualifiedName, and doctype are null, the returned Document is empty with no document element.

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 is null and the namespaceURI is different from null, or if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" [XML 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.

getInterface introduced in DOM Level 3
This method makes available a DOMImplementation's specialized interface (see Mixed DOM implementations).
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 null 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 3 specifications and listed in the Conformance 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 3, the string can be either "3.0", "2.0" or "1.0". If the version is null or empty string, 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.

Note: The properties [notations] and [unparsed entities] defined by the Document Information Item in [XML Information set] are accessible through the DocumentType interface. The property [all declarations processed] is not accessible through the DOM API.


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 {
  // Modified in DOM Level 3:
  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 DOMString       version;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting

  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
           attribute boolean         strictErrorChecking;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
           attribute DOMErrorHandler errorHandler;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
           attribute DOMString       documentURI;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  Node               adoptNode(in Node source)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  void               normalizeDocument();
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  boolean            canSetNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name, 
                                                in boolean state);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  void               setNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name, 
                                             in boolean state)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  boolean            getNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  Node               renameNode(in Node n, 
                                in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                in DOMString name)
                                        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.
This attribute represents the property [character encoding scheme] defined in [XML Information set].
doctype of type DocumentType, readonly, modified in DOM Level 3
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.
This provides direct access to the DocumentType node, child node of this Document. This node can be set at document creation time and later changed through the use of child nodes manipulation methods, such as insertBefore, or replaceChild. Note, however, that while some implementations may instantiate different types of Document objects supporting additional features than the "Core", such as "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML], based on the DocumentType specified at creation time, changing it afterwards is very unlikely to result in a change of the features supported.
documentElement of type Element, readonly
This is a convenience attribute that allows direct access to the child node that is the document element of the document.
This attribute represents the property [document element] defined in [XML Information set].
documentURI of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
The location of the document or null if undefined.
Beware that when the Document supports the feature "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML], the href attribute of the HTML BASE element takes precedence over this attribute.
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.
errorHandler of type DOMErrorHandler, introduced in DOM Level 3
This attribute allows applications to specify a DOMErrorHandler to be called in the event that an error is encountered while performing an operation on a document. Note that not all methods use this mechanism, see the description of each method for details.
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.
This attribute represents the property [standalone] defined in [XML Information set].
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.
This attribute represents the property [version] defined in [XML Information set].
Exceptions on setting

DOMException

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the version is set to a value that is not supported by this Document.

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?
Resolution: Both keys and hashcodes have been dropped.
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.

canSetNormalizationFeature introduced in DOM Level 3
Query whether setting a feature to a specific value is supported.
The feature name has the same form as a DOM hasFeature string.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the feature to check.
state of type boolean
The requested state of the feature (true or false).
Return Value

boolean

true if the feature could be successfully set to the specified value, or false if the feature is not recognized or the requested value is not supported. This does not change the current value of the feature itself.

No Exceptions
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.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
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.namespaceURI namespaceURI
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 1.0].

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
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, otherwise it depends on the case-sentivity of the markup language in use. In that case, the name is mapped to the canonical form of that markup 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.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
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.namespaceURI namespaceURI
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 1.0].

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" [XML 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
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
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 document order.
Parameters
tagname of type DOMString
The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags. For XML, this is case-sensitive, otherwise it depends on the case-sentivity of the markup language in use.
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 document order.
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
getNormalizationFeature introduced in DOM Level 3
Look up the value of a feature.
The feature name has the same form as a DOM hasFeature string. The recognized features are the same as the ones defined for setNormalizationFeature.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the feature to look up.
Return Value

boolean

The current state of the feature (true or false).

Exceptions

DOMException

NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised when the feature name is not recognized.

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, the source node is not altered. User data associated to the imported node is not carried over. However, if any UserDataHandlers has been specified along with the associated data these handlers will be called with the appropriate parameters before this method returns.
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 DocumentFragment are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled under the imported DocumentFragment 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 this type of nodes since they cannot have any children.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
The imported node copies its target and data values from those of the source node.
Note that the deep parameter has no effect on this type of nodes since they cannot have any children.
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.
Note that the deep parameter has no effect on these types of nodes since they cannot have any children.
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 nodes that cannot have any children, and on Attr, and EntityReference 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.

INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if one the imported names contain an illegal character. This may happen when importing an XML 1.1 [XML 1.1] element into an XML 1.0 document, for instance.

normalizeDocument introduced in DOM Level 3
This method acts as if the document was going through a save and load cycle, putting the document in a "normal" form. The actual result depends on the features being set and governing what operations actually take place. See setNormalizationFeature for details.
Noticeably this method normalizes Text nodes, makes the document "namespace wellformed", according to the algorithm described below in pseudo code, by adding missing namespace declaration attributes and adding or changing namespace prefixes, updates the replacement tree of EntityReference nodes, normalizes attribute values, etc.
Mutation events, when supported, are generated to reflect the changes occuring on the document.
See Namespace normalization for details on how namespace declaration attributes and prefixes are normalized.
Issue normalizeNS-1:
Any other name? Joe proposes normalizeNamespaces.
Resolution: normalizeDocument. (F2F 26 Sep 2001)
Issue normalizeNS-2:
How specific should this be? Should we not even specify that this should be done by walking down the tree?
Resolution: Very. See above.
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).
No. Now that it does much more than simply fixing namespaces it only makes sense on Document (F2F 26 Sep 2001).
Issue normalizeNS-6:
What happens with read-only nodes?
Issue normalizeNS-7:
What/how errors should be reported? Are there any?
Resolution: Through the error reporter.
Issue normalizeNS-8:
Should this be optional?
Resolution: No.
Issue normalizeNS-9:
What happens with regard to mutation events?
Resolution: Mutation events are fired as expected. (F2F 28 Feb 2002).
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
renameNode introduced in DOM Level 3
Rename an existing node. When possible this simply changes the name of the given node, otherwise this creates a new node with the specified name and replaces the existing node with the new node as described below. This only applies to nodes of type ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE.
When a new node is created, the following operations are performed: the new node is created, any registered event listener is registered on the new node, any user data attached to the old node is removed from that node, the old node is removed from its parent if it has one, the children are moved to the new node, if the renamed node is an Element its attributes are moved to the new node, the new node is inserted at the position the old node used to have in its parent's child nodes list if it has one, the user data that was attached to the old node is attach to the new node, the user data event NODE_RENAMED is fired.
When the node being renamed is an Attr that is attached to an Element, the node is first removed from the Element attributes map. Then, once renamed, either by modifying the existing node or creating a new one as described above, it is put back.
In addition, when the implementation supports the feature "MutationEvents", each mutation operation involved in this method fires the appropriate event, and in the end the event ElementNameChanged or AttributeNameChanged is fired.
Issue renameNode-1:
Should this throw a HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR?
Resolution: No. (F2F 28 Feb 2002).
Parameters
n of type Node
The node to rename.
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The new namespaceURI.
name of type DOMString
The new qualified name.
Return Value

Node

The renamed node. This is either the specified node or the new node that was created to replace the specified node.

Exceptions

DOMException

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised when the type of the specified node is neither ELEMENT_NODE nor ATTRIBUTE_NODE.

WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised when the specified node was created from a different document than this document.

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" [XML Namespaces]. Also raised, when the node being renamed is an attribute, if the qualifiedName, or its prefix, is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/".

setNormalizationFeature introduced in DOM Level 3
Set the state of a feature.
Issue normalizationFeature-1:
Need to specify the list of features.

Feature names are valid XML names. Implementation specific features (extensions) should choose an implementation specific prefix to avoid name collisions. The following lists feature names that are recognized by all implementations. However, it is sometimes possible for a Document to recognize a feature but not to support setting its value. The following list of recognized features indicates the definitions of each feature state, if setting the state to true or false must be supported or is optional and, which state is the default one:
"canonical-form"
true
[optional]
Canonicalize the document according to the rules specified in [Canonical XML]. Note that this is limited to what can be represented in the DOM. In particular, there is no way to specify the order of the attributes in the DOM.
Issue normalizationFeature-14:
What happen to other features? are they ignored? if yes, how do you know if a feature is ignored?
false
[required] (default)
Do not canonicalize the document.
"cdata-sections"
true
[required] (default)
Keep CDATASection nodes in the document.
Issue normalizationFeature-11:
Name does not work really well in this case. ALH suggests renaming this to "cdata-sections". It works for both load and save.
Resolution: Renamed as suggested. (Telcon 27 Jan 2002).
false
[optional]
Transform CDATASection nodes in the document into Text nodes. The new Text node is then combined with any adjacent Text node.
"comments"
true
[required] (default)
Keep Comment nodes in the document.
false
[required]
Discard Comment nodes in the Document.
"datatype-normalization"
true
[required]
Let the validation process do its datatype normalization that is defined in the used schema language. Note that this does not affect the DTD normalization operation which always takes place, in accordance to [XML 1.0].
Issue normalizationFeature-8:
We should define "datatype normalization".
Resolution: DTD normalization always apply because it's part of XML 1.0. Clarify the spec. (Telcon 27 Jan 2002).
false
[required] (default)
Disable datatype normalization. The XML 1.0 attribute value normalization always occurs though.
"discard-default-content"
true
[required] (default)
Use whatever information available to the implementation (i.e. XML schema, DTD, the specified flag on Attr nodes, and so on) to decide what attributes and content should be discarded or not. Note that the specified flag on Attr nodes in itself is not always reliable, it is only reliable when it is set to false since the only case where it can be set to false is if the attribute was created by the implementation. The default content won't be removed if an implementation does not have any information available.
Issue normalizationFeature-2:
How does exactly work? What's the comment about level 1 implementations?
Resolution: Remove "Level 1" (Telcon 16 Jan 2002).
false
[required]
Keep all attributes and all content.
"entities"
true
[required] (default)
Keep EntityReference and Entity nodes in the document.
Issue normalizationFeature-9:
How does that interact with expand-entity-references? ALH suggests consolidating the two to a single feature called "entity-references" that is used both for load and save.
Resolution: Consolidate both features into a single feature called 'entities'. (Telcon 27 Jan 2002).
false
[optional]
Remove all EntityReference and Entity nodes from the document, putting the entity expansions directly in their place. Text nodes are into "normal" form. Only EntityReference nodes to non-defined entities are kept in the document.
"infoset"
true
[optional]
Only keep in the document the information defined in the XML Information Set [XML Information set].
This forces the following features to false: namespace-declarations, validate-if-schema, entities, cdata-sections.
This forces the following features to true: datatype-normalization, whitespace-in-element-content, comments.
Other features are not changed unless explicity specified in the description of the features.
Note that querying this feature with getFeature returns true only if the individual features specified above are appropriately set.
Issue normalizationFeature-12:
Name doesn't work well here. ALH suggests renaming this to limit-to-infoset or match-infoset, something like that.
Resolution: Renamed 'infoset' (Telcon 27 Jan 2002).
false
Setting infoset to false has no effect.
Issue normalizationFeature-13:
Shouldn't we change this to setting the relevant options back to their default value?
Resolution: No, this is more like a convenience function, it's better to keep it simple. (F2F 28 Feb 2002).
"namespace-declarations"
true
[required] (default)
Include namespace declaration attributes, specified or defaulted from the schema or the DTD, in the document. See also the section Declaring Namespaces in [XML Namespaces].
false
[optional]
Discard all namespace declaration attributes. The Namespace prefixes are retained even if this feature is set to false.
"normalize-characters"
true
[optional]
Perform the W3C Text Normalization of the characters [CharModel] in the document.
false
[required] (default)
Do not perform character normalization.
"split-cdata-sections"
true
[required] (default)
Split CDATA sections containing the CDATA section termination marker ']]>'. When a CDATA section is split a warning is issued.
false
[required]
Signal an error if a CDATASection contains an unrepresentable character.
"validate"
true
[optional]
Require the validation against a schema (i.e. XML schema, DTD, [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save], any other type or representation of schema) of the document as it is being normalized as defined by [XML 1.0]. If validation errors are found, or no schema was found, the error handler is notified. Note also that no datatype normalization (i.e. non-XML 1.0 normalization) is done according to the schema used unless the feature datatype-normalization is true.

Note: validate-if-schema and validate are mutually exclusive, setting one of them to true will set the other one to false.

false
[required] (default)
Only XML 1.0 non-validating processing must be done. Note that validation might still happen if validate-if-schema is true.
"validate-if-schema"
true
[optional]
Enable validation only if a declaration for the document element can be found (independently of where it is found, i.e. XML schema, DTD, [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save], or any other type or representation of schema). If validation errors are found, the error handler is notified. Note also that no datatype normalization (i.e. non-XML 1.0 normalization) is done according to the schema used unless the feature datatype-normalization is true.

Note: validate-if-schema and validate are mutually exclusive, setting one of them to true will set the other one to false.

Issue normalizationFeature-6:
How does that interact with the notion of active AS?
Resolution: If document has AS model, than it "has a schema", thus validation will be performed against the active AS model. (Telcon 16 Jan 2002).
false
[required] (default)
No validation should be performed if the document has a schema. Note that validation must still happen if validate is true.
"whitespace-in-element-content"
true
[required] (default)
Keep all white spaces in the document.
Issue normalizationFeature-15:
How does this feature interact with "validate" and Text.isWhitespaceInElementContent.
false
[optional]
Discard white space in element content while normalizing. The implementation is expected to use the isWhitespaceInElementContent flag on Text nodes to determine if a text node should be written out or not.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the feature to set.
state of type boolean
The requested state of the feature (true or false).
Exceptions

DOMException

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised when the feature name is recognized but the requested value cannot be set.

NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised when the feature name is not recognized.

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;
  // Modified in DOM Level 3:
  Node               insertBefore(in Node newChild, 
                                  in Node refChild)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Modified in DOM Level 3:
  Node               replaceChild(in Node newChild, 
                                  in Node oldChild)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Modified in DOM Level 3:
  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;

  // TreePosition
  const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING        = 0x01;
  const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING        = 0x02;
  const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR         = 0x04;
  const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT       = 0x08;
  const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT       = 0x10;
  const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE        = 0x20;
  const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED     = 0x00;

  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  unsigned short     compareTreePosition(in Node other);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
           attribute DOMString       textContent;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting
                                        // raises(DOMException) on retrieval

  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  boolean            isSameNode(in Node other);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  DOMString          lookupNamespacePrefix(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                           in boolean useDefault);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  boolean            isDefaultNamespace(in DOMString namespaceURI);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  DOMString          lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString prefix);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  boolean            isEqualNode(in Node arg);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  Node               getInterface(in DOMString feature);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  DOMUserData        setUserData(in DOMString key, 
                                 in DOMUserData data, 
                                 in UserDataHandler handler);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  DOMUserData        getUserData(in DOMString key);
};

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 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
Definition group TreePosition

A bitmask indicating the relative tree position of a node with respect to another node.

Issue TreePosition-1:
Should we use fewer bits?
Resolution: No. Simpler that way.
Issue TreePosition-2:
How does a node compare to itself?
Resolution: SAME_NODE and EQUIVALENT. (F2F 26 Sep 2001)
Defined Constants
TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR
The node is an ancestor of the reference node.
TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT
The node is a descendant of the reference node.
TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED
The two nodes are disconnected, they do not have any common ancestor. This is the case of two nodes that are not in the same document.
TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT
The two nodes have an equivalent position. This is the case of two attributes that have the same ownerElement, and two nodes that are the same.
TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING
The node follows the reference node.
TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING
The node precedes the reference node.
TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE
The two nodes are the same. Two nodes that are the same have an equivalent position, though the reverse may not be true.
Attributes
attributes of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
A NamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it is an Element) or null otherwise.
If no namespace declaration appear in the attributes, this attribute represents the property [attributes] defined in [XML Information set]. If namespace declarations appear in the attributes, this attribute combines the properties [attributes] and [namespace attributes] defined in [XML Information set].
baseURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
The absolute base URI of this node or null if undefined. This value is computed according to [XML Base]. However, when the Document supports the feature "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML], the base URI is computed using first the value of the href attribute of the HTML BASE element if any, and the value of the documentURI attribute from the Document interface otherwise.
When the node is an Element, a Document or a a ProcessingInstruction, this attribute represents the properties [base URI] defined in [XML Information set]. When the node is a Notation, an Entity, or an EntityReference, this attribute represents the properties [declaration base URI] in the [XML Information set].
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.
Resolution: No.
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 and teleconference 30 May 2001).
Issue baseURI-4:
If the base HTML element is not yet attached to a document, does the insert change the Document.baseURI?
Resolution: Yes. (F2F 26 Sep 2001)
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.
When the node is a Document, or an Element, and if the NodeList does not contain EntityReference or CDATASection nodes, this attribute represents the properties [children] defined in [XML Information set].
firstChild of type Node, readonly
The first child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.
lastChild of type Node, readonly
The last child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.
localName of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node.
When the node is Element, or Attr, this attribute represents the properties [local name] defined in [XML Information set].
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.
When the node is Element, or Attr, this attribute represents the properties [namespace name] defined in [XML Information set].
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 [XML 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.
When the node is an Element, a ProcessingInstruction, an EntityReference, a CharacterData, a Comment, or a DocumentType, this attribute represents the properties [parent] defined in [XML Information set].
prefix of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 2
The namespace prefix of this node, or null if it is unspecified.
When the node is Element, or Attr, this attribute represents the properties [prefix] defined in [XML Information set].
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 1.0].

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" [XML 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 it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect. 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. No whitespace normalization is performed, the returned string does not contain the element content whitespaces Fundamental Interfaces. 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, ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE, DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE concatenation of the textContent attribute value of every child node, excluding COMMENT_NODE and PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE nodes
ATTRIBUTE_NODE, TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE nodeValue
DOCUMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE, NOTATION_NODE null
Issue textContent-1:
Should any whitespace normalization be performed? MS' text property doesn't but what about "ignorable whitespace"?
Resolution: Does not perform any whitespace normalization and ignores "ignorable whitespace".
Issue textContent-2:
Should this be two methods instead?
Resolution: No. Keep it a read write attribute.
Issue textContent-3:
What about the name? MS uses text and innerText. text conflicts with HTML DOM.
Resolution: Keep the current name, MS has a different name and different semantic.
Issue textContent-4:
Should this be optional?
Resolution: No.
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?
Resolution: (teleconference 23 May 2001) consistency with nodeValue. Remove Document from the list.
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.

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.) and no user data. User data associated to the imported node is not carried over. However, if any UserDataHandlers has been specified along with the associated data these handlers will be called with the appropriate parameters before this method returns.
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 children it contains unless it is a deep clone. This includes text contained in an the Element 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 an Attribute always clones its children, since they represent its value, no matter whether this is a deep clone or not. Cloning an EntityReference automatically constructs its subtree if a corresponding Entity is available, no matter whether this is a deep clone or not. 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
compareTreePosition introduced in DOM Level 3
Compares a node with this node with regard to their position in the tree and according to the document order. This order can be extended by module that define additional types of nodes.
Issue compareTreePosition-1:
Should this method be optional?
Resolution: No.
Issue compareTreePosition-2:
Need reference for namespace nodes.
Resolution: No, instead avoid referencing them directly.
Parameters
other of type Node
The node to compare against this node.
Return Value

unsigned short

Returns how the given node is positioned relatively to this node.

No Exceptions
getInterface introduced in DOM Level 3
This method makes available a Node's specialized interface (see Mixed DOM implementations).
Issue EDOM-isSupported:
What are the relations between Node.isSupported and Node3.getInterface?
Issue EDOM-getInterface-1:
Should we rename this method (and also DOMImplementation.getInterface?)?
Issue EDOM-getInterface-2:
getInterface can return a node that doesn't actually support the requested interface and will lead to a cast exception. Other solutions are returning null or throwing an exception.
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 null 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
getUserData introduced in DOM Level 3
Retrieves the object associated to a key on a this node. The object must first have been set to this node by calling setUserData with the same key.
Parameters
key of type DOMString
The key the object is associated to.
Return Value

DOMUserData

Returns the DOMUserData associated to the given key on this node, or null if there was none.

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 modified in DOM Level 3
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, or if this node if of type Document and the DOM application attempts to insert a second DocumentType or Element node.

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.

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: if this node if of type Document, this exception might be raised if the DOM implementation doesn't support the insertion of a DocumentType or Element node.

isDefaultNamespace introduced in DOM Level 3
This method checks if the specified namespaceURI is the default namespace or not.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI to look for.
Return Value

boolean

true if the specified namespaceURI is the default namespace, false otherwise.

No Exceptions
isEqualNode 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 references to the same object) which can be tested with Node.isSameNode. All nodes that are the same will also be equal, though the reverse may not be true.
Two nodes are equal if and only if the following conditions are satisfied:
  • The two nodes are of the same type.
  • The following string attributes are equal: nodeName, localName, namespaceURI, prefix, nodeValue, baseURI. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and are character for character identical.
  • The attributes NamedNodeMaps are equal. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and for each node that exists in one map there is a node that exists in the other map and is equal, although not necessarily at the same index.
  • The childNodes NodeLists are equal. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and contain equal nodes at the same index. Note that normalization can affect equality; to avoid this, nodes should be normalized before being compared.

For two DocumentType nodes to be equal, the following conditions must also be satisfied:
  • The following string attributes are equal: publicId, systemId, internalSubset.
  • The entities NamedNodeMaps are equal.
  • The notations NamedNodeMaps are equal.

On the other hand, the following do not affect equality: the ownerDocument attribute, the specified attribute for Attr nodes, the isWhitespaceInElementContent attribute for Text nodes, as well as any user data or event listeners registered on the nodes.
Issue isEqualNode-1:
Should this be optional?
Resolution: No.
Issue isEqualNode-2:
Should the deep parameter be dropped?
Resolution: Yes (Telcon Apr 3, 2002).
Parameters
arg of type Node
The node to compare equality with.
Return Value

boolean

If the nodes, and possibly subtrees are equal, true otherwise false.

No Exceptions
isSameNode introduced in DOM Level 3
Returns whether this node is the same node as the given one.
This method provides a way to determine whether two Node references returned by the implementation reference the same object. When two Node references are references to the same object, even if through a proxy, the references may be used completely interchangeably, such that all attributes have the same values and calling the same DOM method on either reference always has exactly the same effect.
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.
See Namespace Prefix Lookup for details on the algorithm used by this method.
Issue lookupNamespacePrefix-1:
Should this be optional?
Resolution: No.
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?
Resolution: See Namespace Prefix Lookup.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI to look for.
useDefault of type boolean
Indicates if the lookup mechanism should take into account the default namespace or not.
Return Value

DOMString

Returns an associated namespace prefix if found, null if none is found and useDefault is false, or null if not found or it is the default namespace and useDefault is true. If more than one prefix are associated to the namespace prefix, the returned namespace prefix is implementation dependent.

No Exceptions
lookupNamespaceURI introduced in DOM Level 3
Look up the namespace URI associated to the given prefix, starting from this node.
See Namespace URI Lookup for details on the algorithm used by this method.
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?
Resolution: No.
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?
Resolution: See Namespace URI Lookup.
Parameters
prefix of type DOMString
The prefix to look for. If this parameter is null, the method will return the default namespace URI if any.
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
removeChild modified in DOM Level 3
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.

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: if this node if of type Document, this exception might be raised if the DOM implementation doesn't support the removal of the DocumentType child or the Element child.

replaceChild modified in DOM Level 3
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.

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: if this node if of type Document, this exception might be raised if the DOM implementation doesn't support the replacement of the DocumentType child or Element child.

setUserData introduced in DOM Level 3
Associate an object to a key on this node. The object can later be retrieved from this node by calling getUserData with the same key.
Parameters
key of type DOMString
The key to associate the object to.
data of type DOMUserData
The object to associate to the given key, or null to remove any existing association to that key.
handler of type UserDataHandler
The handler to associate to that key, or null.
Return Value

DOMUserData

Returns the DOMUserData previously associated to the given key on this node, or null if there was none.

No Exceptions
Interface NodeList

The NodeList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of nodes, without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. 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.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
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 applicable.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The nodeName of the node to remove.
Return Value

Node

The node removed from this map if a node with such a name exists.

Exceptions

DOMException

NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if there is no node named name in this map.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly.

removeNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Removes a node specified by local name and namespace URI. A removed attribute may be known to have a default value when this map contains the attributes attached to an element, as returned by the attributes attribute of the Node interface. If so, an attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable.
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.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the node to remove.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the node to remove.
Return Value

Node

The node removed from this map if a node with such a local name and namespace URI exists.

Exceptions

DOMException

NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if there is no node with the specified namespaceURI and localName in this map.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly.

setNamedItem
Adds a node using its nodeName attribute. If a node with that name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing a node by itself has no effect.
As the nodeName attribute is used to derive the name which the node must be stored under, multiple nodes of certain types (those that have a "special" string value) cannot be stored as the names would clash. This is seen as preferable to allowing nodes to be aliased.
Parameters
arg of type Node
A node to store in this map. The node will later be accessible using the value of its nodeName attribute.
Return Value

Node

If the new Node replaces an existing node the replaced Node is returned, otherwise null is returned.

Exceptions

DOMException

WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if arg was created from a different document than the one that created this map.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly.

INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if arg is an Attr that is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if an attempt is made to add a node doesn't belong in this NamedNodeMap. Examples would include trying to insert something other than an Attr node into an Element's map of attributes, or a non-Entity node into the DocumentType's map of Entities.

setNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a node using its namespaceURI 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. Replacing a node by itself has no effect.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Parameters
arg of type Node
A node to store in this map. The node will later be accessible using the value of its namespaceURI and localName attributes.
Return Value

Node

If the new Node replaces an existing node the replaced Node is returned, otherwise null is returned.

Exceptions

DOMException

WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if arg was created from a different document than the one that created this map.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly.

INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if arg is an Attr that is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if an attempt is made to add a node doesn't belong in this NamedNodeMap. Examples would include trying to insert something other than an Attr node into an Element's map of attributes, or a non-Entity node into the DocumentType's map of Entities.

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Always thrown if the current document does not support the "XML" feature, since namespaces were defined by XML.

Interface CharacterData

The CharacterData interface extends Node with a set of attributes and methods for accessing character data in the DOM. For clarity this set is defined here rather than on each object that uses these attributes and methods. No DOM objects correspond directly to CharacterData, though Text and others do inherit the interface from it. All offsets in this interface start from 0.

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.


IDL Definition
interface CharacterData : Node {
           attribute DOMString       data;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting
                                        // raises(DOMException) on retrieval

  readonly attribute unsigned long   length;
  DOMString          substringData(in unsigned long offset, 
                                   in unsigned long count)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  void               appendData(in DOMString arg)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  void               insertData(in unsigned long offset, 
                                in DOMString arg)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  void               deleteData(in unsigned long offset, 
                                in unsigned long count)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  void               replaceData(in unsigned long offset, 
                                 in unsigned long count, 
                                 in DOMString arg)
                                        raises(DOMException);
};

Attributes
data of type DOMString
The character data of the node that implements this interface. The DOM implementation may not put arbitrary limits on the amount of data that may be stored in a CharacterData node. However, implementation limits may mean that the entirety of a node's data may not fit into a single DOMString. In such cases, the user may call substringData to retrieve the data in appropriately sized pieces.
When the CharacterData is a Text, or a CDATASection, this attribute contains the property [character code] defined in [XML Information set]. When the CharacterData is a Comment, this attribute contains the property [content] defined by the Comment Information Item in [XML Information set].
Exceptions on setting

DOMException

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.

Exceptions on retrieval

DOMException

DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return more characters than fit in a DOMString variable on the implementation platform.

length of type unsigned long, readonly
The number of 16-bit units that are available through data and the substringData method below. This may have the value zero, i.e., CharacterData nodes may be empty.
Methods
appendData
Append the string to the end of the character data of the node. Upon success, data provides access to the concatenation of data and the DOMString specified.
Parameters
arg of type DOMString
The DOMString to append.
Exceptions

DOMException

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value
deleteData
Remove a range of 16-bit units from the node. Upon success, data and length reflect the change.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The offset from which to start removing.
count of type unsigned long
The number of 16-bit units to delete. If the sum of offset and count exceeds length then all 16-bit units from offset to the end of the data are deleted.
Exceptions

DOMException

INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data, or if the specified count is negative.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value
insertData
Insert a string at the specified 16-bit unit offset.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The character offset at which to insert.
arg of type DOMString
The DOMString to insert.
Exceptions

DOMException

INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value
replaceData
Replace the characters starting at the specified 16-bit unit offset with the specified string.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The offset from which to start replacing.
count of type unsigned long
The number of 16-bit units to replace. If the sum of offset and count exceeds length, then all 16-bit units to the end of the data are replaced; (i.e., the effect is the same as a remove method call with the same range, followed by an append method invocation).
arg of type DOMString
The DOMString with which the range must be replaced.
Exceptions

DOMException

INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data, or if the specified count is negative.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value
substringData
Extracts a range of data from the node.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
Start offset of substring to extract.
count of type unsigned long
The number of 16-bit units to extract.
Return Value

DOMString

The specified substring. If the sum of offset and count exceeds the length, then all 16-bit units to the end of the data are returned.

Exceptions

DOMException

INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data, or if the specified count is negative.

DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified range of text does not fit into a DOMString.

Interface Attr

The Attr interface represents an attribute in an Element object. Typically the allowable values for the attribute are defined in a document type definition.

Attr objects inherit the Node interface, but since they are not actually child nodes of the element they describe, the DOM does not consider them part of the document tree. Thus, the Node attributes parentNode, previousSibling, and nextSibling have a null value for Attr objects. The DOM takes the view that attributes are properties of elements rather than having a separate identity from the elements they are associated with; this should make it more efficient to implement such features as default attributes associated with all elements of a given type. Furthermore, Attr nodes may not be immediate children of a DocumentFragment. However, they can be associated with Element nodes contained within a DocumentFragment. In short, users and implementors of the DOM need to be aware that Attr nodes have some things in common with other objects inheriting the Node interface, but they also are quite distinct.

The attribute's effective value is determined as follows: if this attribute has been explicitly assigned any value, that value is the attribute's effective value; otherwise, if there is a declaration for this attribute, and that declaration includes a default value, then that default value is the attribute's effective value; otherwise, the attribute does not exist on this element in the structure model until it has been explicitly added. Note that the nodeValue attribute on the Attr instance can also be used to retrieve the string version of the attribute's value(s).

In XML, where the value of an attribute can contain entity references, the child nodes of the Attr node may be either Text or EntityReference nodes (when these are in use; see the description of EntityReference for discussion). Because the DOM Core is not aware of attribute types, it treats all attribute values as simple strings, even if the DTD or schema declares them as having tokenized types.

The DOM implementation does not perform any attribute value normalization. While it is expected that the value and nodeValue attributes of an Attr node initially return the normalized value, this may not be the case after mutation. This is true, independently of whether the mutation is performed by setting the string value directly or by changing the Attr child nodes. In particular, this is true when character entity references are involved, given that they are not represented in the DOM and they impact attribute value normalization.

Note: The properties [attribute type] and [references] defined in [XML Information set] are not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core. However, [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save] does provide a way to access the property [attribute type].


IDL Definition
interface Attr : Node {
  readonly attribute DOMString       name;
  readonly attribute boolean         specified;
           attribute DOMString       value;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting

  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  readonly attribute Element         ownerElement;
};

Attributes
name of type DOMString, readonly
Returns the name of this attribute.
ownerElement of type Element, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The Element node this attribute is attached to or null if this attribute is not in use.
This attribute represents the property [owner element] defined in [XML Information set].
specified of type boolean, readonly
If this attribute was explicitly given a value in the original document, this is true; otherwise, it is false. Note that the implementation is in charge of this attribute, not the user. If the user changes the value of the attribute (even if it ends up having the same value as the default value) then the specified flag is automatically flipped to true. To re-specify the attribute as the default value from the DTD, the user must delete the attribute. The implementation will then make a new attribute available with specified set to false and the default value (if one exists).
In summary:
  • If the attribute has an assigned value in the document then specified is true, and the value is the assigned value.
  • If the attribute has no assigned value in the document and has a default value in the DTD, then specified is false, and the value is the default value in the DTD.
  • If the attribute has no assigned value in the document and has a value of #IMPLIED in the DTD, then the attribute does not appear in the structure model of the document.
  • If the ownerElement attribute is null (i.e. because it was just created or was set to null by the various removal and cloning operations) specified is true.

This attribute represents the property [specified] defined [XML Information set].
value of type DOMString
On retrieval, the value of the attribute is returned as a string. Character and general entity references are replaced with their values. See also the method getAttribute on the Element interface.
On setting, this creates a Text node with the unparsed contents of the string. I.e. any characters that an XML processor would recognize as markup are instead treated as literal text. See also the method setAttribute on the Element interface.
If the value does contain the normalized attribute value, this attribute represents the property [normalized value] defined in [XML Information set].
Exceptions on setting

DOMException

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.

Interface Element

The Element interface represents an element in an HTML or XML document. Elements may have attributes associated with them; since the Element interface inherits from Node, the generic Node interface attribute attributes may be used to retrieve the set of all attributes for an element. There are methods on the Element interface to retrieve either an Attr object by name or an attribute value by name. In XML, where an attribute value may contain entity references, an Attr object should be retrieved to examine the possibly fairly complex sub-tree representing the attribute value. On the other hand, in HTML, where all attributes have simple string values, methods to directly access an attribute value can safely be used as a convenience.

Note: In DOM Level 2, the method normalize is inherited from the Node interface where it was moved.

Note: The property [in-scope namespaces] defined in [XML Information set] are not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core. However, [DOM Level 3 XPath] does provide a way to access the property [in-scope namespaces].


IDL Definition
interface Element : Node {
  readonly attribute DOMString       tagName;
  DOMString          getAttribute(in DOMString name);
  void               setAttribute(in DOMString name, 
                                  in DOMString value)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  void               removeAttribute(in DOMString name)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  Attr               getAttributeNode(in DOMString name);
  Attr               setAttributeNode(in Attr newAttr)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  Attr               removeAttributeNode(in Attr oldAttr)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  NodeList           getElementsByTagName(in DOMString name);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  DOMString          getAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                    in DOMString localName);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  void               setAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                    in DOMString qualifiedName, 
                                    in DOMString value)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  void               removeAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                       in DOMString localName)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  Attr               getAttributeNodeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                        in DOMString localName);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  Attr               setAttributeNodeNS(in Attr newAttr)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  NodeList           getElementsByTagNameNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                            in DOMString localName);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  boolean            hasAttribute(in DOMString name);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  boolean            hasAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                    in DOMString localName);
};

Attributes
tagName of type DOMString, readonly
The name of the element. For example, in:
          <elementExample id="demo"> 
          ... 
          </elementExample> ,
       
tagName has the value "elementExample". Note that this is case-preserving in XML, as are all of the operations of the DOM. The HTML DOM returns the tagName of an HTML element in the canonical uppercase form, regardless of the case in the source HTML document.
Methods
getAttribute
Retrieves an attribute value by name.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value

DOMString

The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if that attribute does not have a specified or default value.

No Exceptions
getAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Retrieves an attribute value 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.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to retrieve.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value

DOMString

The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if that attribute does not have a specified or default value.

No Exceptions
getAttributeNode
Retrieves an attribute node by name.
To retrieve an attribute node by qualified name and namespace URI, use the getAttributeNodeNS method.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name (nodeName) of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value

Attr

The Attr node with the specified name (nodeName) or null if there is no such attribute.

No Exceptions
getAttributeNodeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Retrieves an Attr node 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.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to retrieve.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value

Attr

The Attr node with the specified attribute local name and namespace URI or null if there is no such attribute.

No Exceptions
getElementsByTagName
Returns a NodeList of all descendant Elements with a given tag name, in document order.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags.
Return Value

NodeList

A list of matching Element nodes.

No Exceptions
getElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns a NodeList of all the descendant Elements with a given local name and namespace URI in document order.
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 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
hasAttribute introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns true when an attribute with a given name is specified on this element or has a default value, false otherwise.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the attribute to look for.
Return Value

boolean

true if an attribute with the given name is specified on this element or has a default value, false otherwise.

No Exceptions
hasAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns true when an attribute with a given local name and namespace URI is specified on this element or has a default value, false otherwise.
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.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to look for.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the attribute to look for.
Return Value

boolean

true if an attribute with the given local name and namespace URI is specified or has a default value on this element, false otherwise.

No Exceptions
removeAttribute
Removes an attribute by name. If the removed attribute is known to have a default value, an attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable. If the attribute does not have a specified or default value, calling this method has no effect.
To remove an attribute by local name and namespace URI, use the removeAttributeNS method.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the attribute to remove.
Exceptions

DOMException

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value
removeAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Removes an attribute by local name and namespace URI. If the removed attribute has a default value it is immediately replaced. The replacing attribute has the same namespace URI and local name, as well as the original prefix. If the attribute does not have a specified or default value, calling this method has no effect.
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.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to remove.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the attribute to remove.
Exceptions

DOMException

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value
removeAttributeNode
Removes the specified attribute node. If the removed Attr has a default value it is immediately replaced. The replacing attribute has the same namespace URI and local name, as well as the original prefix, when applicable.
Parameters
oldAttr of type Attr
The Attr node to remove from the attribute list.
Return Value

Attr

The Attr node that was removed.

Exceptions

DOMException

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldAttr is not an attribute of the element.

setAttribute
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that name is already present in the element, its value is changed to be that of the value parameter. This value is a simple string; it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as syntax to be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is written out. In order to assign an attribute value that contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.
To set an attribute with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the setAttributeNS method.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the attribute to create or alter.
value of type DOMString
Value to set in string form.
Exceptions

DOMException

INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value
setAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with the same local name and namespace URI is already present on the element, its prefix is changed to be the prefix part of the qualifiedName, and its value is changed to be the value parameter. This value is a simple string; it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as syntax to be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is written out. In order to assign an attribute value that contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNodeNS or setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to create or alter.
qualifiedName of type DOMString
The qualified name of the attribute to create or alter.
value of type DOMString
The value to set in string form.
Exceptions

DOMException

INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name contains an illegal character, per the XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0].

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

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.

No Return Value
setAttributeNode
Adds a new attribute node. If an attribute with that name (nodeName) is already present in the element, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing an attribute node by itself has no effect.
To add a new attribute node with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the setAttributeNodeNS method.
Parameters
newAttr of type Attr
The Attr node to add to the attribute list.
Return Value

Attr

If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute, the replaced Attr node is returned, otherwise null is returned.

Exceptions

DOMException

WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newAttr was created from a different document than the one that created the element.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if newAttr is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

setAttributeNodeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that local name and that namespace URI is already present in the element, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing an attribute node by itself has no effect.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Parameters
newAttr of type Attr
The Attr node to add to the attribute list.
Return Value

Attr

If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute with the same local name and namespace URI, the replaced Attr node is returned, otherwise null is returned.

Exceptions

DOMException

WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newAttr was created from a different document than the one that created the element.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if newAttr is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Always thrown if the current document does not support the "XML" feature, since namespaces were defined by XML.

Interface Text

The Text interface inherits from CharacterData and represents the textual content (termed character data in XML) of an Element or Attr. If there is no markup inside an element's content, the text is contained in a single object implementing the Text interface that is the only child of the element. If there is markup, it is parsed into the information items (elements, comments, etc.) and Text nodes that form the list of children of the element.

When a document is first made available via the DOM, there is only one Text node for each block of text. Users may create adjacent Text nodes that represent the contents of a given element without any intervening markup, but should be aware that there is no way to represent the separations between these nodes in XML or HTML, so they will not (in general) persist between DOM editing sessions. The normalize method on Node merges any such adjacent Text objects into a single node for each block of text.


IDL Definition
interface Text : CharacterData {
  Text               splitText(in unsigned long offset)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  readonly attribute boolean         isWhitespaceInElementContent;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  readonly attribute DOMString       wholeText;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  Text               replaceWholeText(in DOMString content)
                                        raises(DOMException);
};

Attributes
isWhitespaceInElementContent of type boolean, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
Returns whether this text node contains whitespace in element content, often abusively called "ignorable whitespace".

Note: An implementation can only return true if, one way or another, it has access to the relevant information (e.g., the DTD or schema).


This attribute represents the property [element content whitespace] defined in [XML Information set].
wholeText of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
Returns all text of Text nodes logically-adjacent text nodes to this node, concatenated in document order.
Methods
replaceWholeText introduced in DOM Level 3
Substitutes the a specified text for the text of the current node and all logically-adjacent text nodes.
This method returns the node in the hierarchy which received the replacement text, which is null if the text was empty or is the current node if the current node is not read-only or otherwise is a new node of the same type as the current node inserted at the site of the replacement. All logically-adjacent text nodes are removed including the current node unless it was the recipient of the replacement text.
Where the nodes to be removed are read-only descendants of an EntityReference, the EntityReference must be removed instead of the read-only nodes. If any EntityReference to be removed has descendants that are not EntityReference, Text, or CDATASection nodes, the replaceWholeText method must fail before performing any modification of the document, raising a DOMException with the code NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR.
Parameters
content of type DOMString
The content of the replacing Text node.
Return Value

Text

The Text node created with the specified content.

Exceptions

DOMException

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if one of the Text nodes being replaced is readonly.

splitText
Breaks this node into two nodes at the specified offset, keeping both in the tree as siblings. After being split, this node will contain all the content up to the offset point. A new node of the same type, which contains all the content at and after the offset point, is returned. If the original node had a parent node, the new node is inserted as the next sibling of the original node. When the offset is equal to the length of this node, the new node has no data.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The 16-bit unit offset at which to split, starting from 0.
Return Value

Text

The new node, of the same type as this node.

Exceptions

DOMException

INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data.

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

Interface Comment

This interface inherits from CharacterData and represents the content of a comment, i.e., all the characters between the starting '<!--' and ending '-->'. Note that this is the definition of a comment in XML, and, in practice, HTML, although some HTML tools may implement the full SGML comment structure.


IDL Definition
interface Comment : CharacterData {
};

Interface UserDataHandler

When associating an object to a key on a node using setUserData the application can provide a handler that gets called when the node the object is associated to is being cloned or imported. This can be used by the application to implement various behaviors regarding the data it associates to the DOM nodes. This interface defines that handler.


IDL Definition
interface UserDataHandler {

  // OperationType
  const unsigned short      NODE_CLONED                    = 1;
  const unsigned short      NODE_IMPORTED                  = 2;
  const unsigned short      NODE_DELETED                   = 3;
  const unsigned short      NODE_RENAMED                   = 4;

  void               handle(in unsigned short operation, 
                            in DOMString key, 
                            in DOMObject data, 
                            in Node src, 
                            in Node dst);
};

Definition group OperationType

An integer indicating the type of operation being performed on a node.

Defined Constants
NODE_CLONED
The node is cloned.
NODE_DELETED
The node is deleted.
NODE_IMPORTED
The node is imported.
NODE_RENAMED
The node is renamed.
Methods
handle
This method is called whenever the node for which this handler is registered is imported or cloned.
Parameters
operation of type unsigned short
Specifies the type of operation that is being performed on the node.
key of type DOMString
Specifies the key for which this handler is being called.
data of type DOMObject
Specifies the data for which this handler is being called.
src of type Node
Specifies the node being cloned, imported, or renamed. This is null when the node is being deleted.
dst of type Node
Specifies the node newly created if any, or null.
No Return Value
No Exceptions
Interface DOMError

DOMError is an interface that describes an error.


IDL Definition
interface DOMError {
  const unsigned short      SEVERITY_WARNING               = 0;
  const unsigned short      SEVERITY_ERROR                 = 1;
  const unsigned short      SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR           = 2;
  readonly attribute unsigned short  severity;
  readonly attribute DOMString       message;
  readonly attribute Object          relatedException;
  readonly attribute DOMLocator      location;
};

Constant SEVERITY_WARNING
The severity of the error described by the DOMError is warning
Constant SEVERITY_ERROR
The severity of the error described by the DOMError is error
Constant SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR
The severity of the error described by the DOMError is fatal error
Attributes
location of type DOMLocator, readonly
The location of the error.
message of type DOMString, readonly
An implementation specific string describing the error that occured.
relatedException of type Object, readonly
The related platform dependent exception if any.
Issue Error-1:
exception is a reserved word, we need to rename it.
Resolution: Change to "relatedException". (F2F 26 Sep 2001)
severity of type unsigned short, readonly
The severity of the error, either SEVERITY_WARNING, SEVERITY_ERROR, or SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR.
Interface DOMErrorHandler

DOMErrorHandler is a callback interface that the DOM implementation can call when reporting errors that happens while processing XML data, or when doing some other processing (e.g. validating a document).

The application that is using the DOM implementation is expected to implement this interface.

Issue ErrorHandler-1:
How does one register an error handler in the core? Passed as an argument to super-duper-normalize or registered on the DOMImplementation?
Resolution: Document interface has an attribute errorHandler.

IDL Definition
interface DOMErrorHandler {
  boolean            handleError(in DOMError error);
};

Methods
handleError
This method is called on the error handler when an error occures.
Parameters
error of type DOMError
The error object that describes the error, this object may be reused by the DOM implementation across multiple calls to the handleEvent method.
Return Value

boolean

If the handleError method returns true the DOM implementation should continue as if the error didn't happen when possible, if the method returns false then the DOM implementation should stop the current processing when possible.

No Exceptions
Interface DOMLocator

DOMLocator is an interface that describes a location (e.g. where an error occured).


IDL Definition
interface DOMLocator {
  readonly attribute long            lineNumber;
  readonly attribute long            columnNumber;
  readonly attribute long            offset;
  readonly attribute Node            errorNode;
  readonly attribute DOMString       uri;
};

Attributes
columnNumber of type long, readonly
The column number where the error occured, or -1 if there is no column number available.
errorNode of type Node, readonly
The DOM Node where the error occured, or null if there is no Node available.
lineNumber of type long, readonly
The line number where the error occured, or -1 if there is no line number available.
offset of type long, readonly
The byte or character offset into the input source, if we're parsing a file or a byte stream then this will be the byte offset into that stream, but if a character media is parsed then the offset will be the character offset. The value is -1 if there is no offset available.
uri of type DOMString, readonly
The URI where the error occured, or null if there is no URI available.

1.3. Extended Interfaces

The interfaces defined here form part of the DOM Core specification, but objects that expose these interfaces will never be encountered in a DOM implementation that deals only with HTML.

The interfaces found within this section are not mandatory. A DOM application may use the hasFeature(feature, version) method of the DOMImplementation interface with parameter values "XML" and "3.0" (respectively) to determine whether or not this module is supported by the implementation. In order to fully support this module, an implementation must also support the "Core" feature defined in Fundamental Interfaces. Please refer to additional information about Conformance in this specification. The DOM Level 3 XML module is backward compatible with the DOM Level 2 XML [DOM Level 2 Core] and DOM Level 1 XML [DOM Level 1] modules, i.e. a DOM Level 3 XML implementation who returns true for "XML" with the version number "3.0" must also return true for this feature when the version number is "2.0", "1.0", "" or, null.

Interface CDATASection

CDATA sections are used to escape blocks of text containing characters that would otherwise be regarded as markup. The only delimiter that is recognized in a CDATA section is the "]]>" string that ends the CDATA section. CDATA sections cannot be nested. Their primary purpose is for including material such as XML fragments, without needing to escape all the delimiters.

The DOMString attribute of the Text node holds the text that is contained by the CDATA section. Note that this may contain characters that need to be escaped outside of CDATA sections and that, depending on the character encoding ("charset") chosen for serialization, it may be impossible to write out some characters as part of a CDATA section.

The CDATASection interface inherits from the CharacterData interface through the Text interface. Adjacent CDATASection nodes are not merged by use of the normalize method of the Node interface.

Note: Because no markup is recognized within a CDATASection, character numeric references cannot be used as an escape mechanism when serializing. Therefore, action needs to be taken when serializing a CDATASection with a character encoding where some of the contained characters cannot be represented. Failure to do so would not produce well-formed XML.
One potential solution in the serialization process is to end the CDATA section before the character, output the character using a character reference or entity reference, and open a new CDATA section for any further characters in the text node. Note, however, that some code conversion libraries at the time of writing do not return an error or exception when a character is missing from the encoding, making the task of ensuring that data is not corrupted on serialization more difficult.


IDL Definition
interface CDATASection : Text {
};

Interface DocumentType

Each Document has a doctype attribute whose value is either null or a DocumentType object. The DocumentType interface in the DOM Core provides an interface to the list of entities that are defined for the document, and little else because the effect of namespaces and the various XML schema efforts on DTD representation are not clearly understood as of this writing.

The DOM Level 2 doesn't support editing DocumentType nodes.

Note: The property [children] defined by the Document Type Declaration Information Item in [XML Information set] is not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core.


IDL Definition
interface DocumentType : Node {
  readonly attribute DOMString       name;
  readonly attribute NamedNodeMap    entities;
  readonly attribute NamedNodeMap    notations;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  readonly attribute DOMString       publicId;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  readonly attribute DOMString       systemId;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  readonly attribute DOMString       internalSubset;
};

Attributes
entities of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
A NamedNodeMap containing the general entities, both external and internal, declared in the DTD. Parameter entities are not contained. Duplicates are discarded. For example in:
<!DOCTYPE ex SYSTEM "ex.dtd" [
  <!ENTITY foo "foo">
  <!ENTITY bar "bar">
  <!ENTITY bar "bar2">
  <!ENTITY % baz "baz">
]>
<ex/>
the interface provides access to foo and the first declaration of bar but not the second declaration of bar or baz. Every node in this map also implements the Entity interface.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing entities, therefore entities cannot be altered in any way.
internalSubset of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The internal subset as a string, or null if there is none. This is does not contain the delimiting square brackets.

Note: The actual content returned depends on how much information is available to the implementation. This may vary depending on various parameters, including the XML processor used to build the document.

name of type DOMString, readonly
The name of DTD; i.e., the name immediately following the DOCTYPE keyword.
notations of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
A NamedNodeMap containing the notations declared in the DTD. Duplicates are discarded. Every node in this map also implements the Notation interface.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing notations, therefore notations cannot be altered in any way.
This attribute represents the property [notations] defined by the Document Information Item in [XML Information set].
publicId of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The public identifier of the external subset.
This attribute represents the property [public identifier] defined by the Document Type Declaration Information Item in [XML Information set].
systemId of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The system identifier of the external subset. This may be an absolute URI or not.
This attribute represents the property [system identifier] defined by the Document Type Declaration Information Item in [XML Information set].
Interface Notation

This interface represents a notation declared in the DTD. A notation either declares, by name, the format of an unparsed entity (see section 4.7 of the XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0]), or is used for formal declaration of processing instruction targets (see section 2.6 of the XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0]). The nodeName attribute inherited from Node is set to the declared name of the notation.

The DOM Level 1 does not support editing Notation nodes; they are therefore readonly.

A Notation node does not have any parent.

Issue Notation-1:
adds a namespaceURI for notations?
Resolution: No. 1- notations are attached to a DocumentType. 2- what would be the key for notations in namednodemap?

IDL Definition
interface Notation : Node {
  readonly attribute DOMString       publicId;
  readonly attribute DOMString       systemId;
};

Attributes
publicId of type DOMString, readonly
The public identifier of this notation. If the public identifier was not specified, this is null.
This attribute represents the property [public identifier] defined by the Notation Information Item in [XML Information set].
systemId of type DOMString, readonly
The system identifier of this notation. If the system identifier was not specified, this is null. This may be an absolute URI or not.
This attribute represents the property [system identifier] defined by the Notation Information Item in [XML Information set].
Interface Entity

This interface represents an entity, either parsed or unparsed, in an XML document. Note that this models the entity itself not the entity declaration. Entity declaration modeling has been left for a later Level of the DOM specification.

The nodeName attribute that is inherited from Node contains the name of the entity.

An XML processor may choose to completely expand entities before the structure model is passed to the DOM; in this case there will be no EntityReference nodes in the document tree.

XML does not mandate that a non-validating XML processor read and process entity declarations made in the external subset or declared in external parameter entities. This means that parsed entities declared in the external subset need not be expanded by some classes of applications, and that the replacement text of the entity may not be available. When the replacement text is available, the corresponding Entity node's child list represents the structure of that replacement value. Otherwise, the child list is empty.

The DOM Level 2 does not support editing Entity nodes; if a user wants to make changes to the contents of an Entity, every related EntityReference node has to be replaced in the structure model by a clone of the Entity's contents, and then the desired changes must be made to each of those clones instead. Entity nodes and all their descendants are readonly.

An Entity node does not have any parent.

Note: If the entity contains an unbound namespace prefix, the namespaceURI of the corresponding node in the Entity node subtree is null. The same is true for EntityReference nodes that refer to this entity, when they are created using the createEntityReference method of the Document interface. The DOM Level 2 does not support any mechanism to resolve namespace prefixes.

Note: The properties [notation name] and [notation] defined in [XML Information set] are not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core. However, [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save] does provide a way to access them.


IDL Definition
interface Entity : Node {
  readonly attribute DOMString       publicId;
  readonly attribute DOMString       systemId;
  readonly attribute DOMString       notationName;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
           attribute DOMString       actualEncoding;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
           attribute DOMString       encoding;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
           attribute DOMString       version;
};

Attributes
actualEncoding of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying the actual encoding of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is null otherwise.
encoding of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the encoding of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is null otherwise.
notationName of type DOMString, readonly
For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the entity. For parsed entities, this is null.
publicId of type DOMString, readonly
The public identifier associated with the entity if specified, and null otherwise.
This attribute represents the property [public identifier] defined by the Unparsed Entity Information Item in [XML Information set].
systemId of type DOMString, readonly
The system identifier associated with the entity if specified, and null otherwise. This may be an absolute URI or not.
This attribute represents the property [system identifier] defined by the Unparsed Entity Information Item in [XML Information set].
version of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the version number of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is null otherwise.
Interface EntityReference

EntityReference objects may be inserted into the structure model when an entity reference is in the source document, or when the user wishes to insert an entity reference. Note that character references and references to predefined entities are considered to be expanded by the HTML or XML processor so that characters are represented by their Unicode equivalent rather than by an entity reference. Moreover, the XML processor may completely expand references to entities while building the structure model, instead of providing EntityReference objects. If it does provide such objects, then for a given EntityReference node, it may be that there is no Entity node representing the referenced entity. If such an Entity exists, then the subtree of the EntityReference node is in general a copy of the Entity node subtree. However, this may not be true when an entity contains an unbound namespace prefix. In such a case, because the namespace prefix resolution depends on where the entity reference is, the descendants of the EntityReference node may be bound to different namespace URIs.

As for Entity nodes, EntityReference nodes and all their descendants are readonly.

Note: The properties [system identifier] and [public identifier] defined by the Unexpanded Entity Reference Information Item in [XML Information set] are accessible through the Entity interface. The property [all declarations processed] is not accessible through the DOM API.


IDL Definition
interface EntityReference : Node {
};

Interface ProcessingInstruction

The ProcessingInstruction interface represents a "processing instruction", used in XML as a way to keep processor-specific information in the text of the document.

Note: The property [notation] defined in [XML Information set] is not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core.


IDL Definition
interface ProcessingInstruction : Node {
  readonly attribute DOMString       target;
           attribute DOMString       data;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting

};

Attributes
data of type DOMString
The content of this processing instruction. This is from the first non white space character after the target to the character immediately preceding the ?>.
This attribute represents the property [content] defined by the Processing Instruction Information Item in [XML Information set].
Exceptions on setting

DOMException

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.

target of type DOMString, readonly
The target of this processing instruction. XML defines this as being the first token following the markup that begins the processing instruction.
This attribute represents the property [target] defined in [XML Information set].

09 April 2002

Appendix A: Changes

Editors:
Arnaud Le Hors, IBM
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C

A.1: Changes between DOM Level 2 Core and DOM Level 3 Core

To be completed...

A.2: Changes between DOM Level 1 Core and DOM Level 2 Core

OMG IDL
The DOM Level 2 specifications are now using Corba 2.3.1 instead of Corba 2.2.
Type DOMString
The definition of DOMString in IDL is now a valuetype.

A.2.1: Changes to DOM Level 1 Core interfaces and exceptions

Interface Attr
The Attr interface has one new attribute: ownerElement.
Interface Document
The Document interface has five new methods: importNode, createElementNS, createAttributeNS, getElementsByTagNameNS and getElementById.
Interface NamedNodeMap
The NamedNodeMap interface has three new methods: getNamedItemNS, setNamedItemNS, removeNamedItemNS.
Interface Node
The Node interface has two new methods: isSupported and hasAttributes.
normalize, previously in the Element interface, has been moved in the Node interface.
The Node interface has three new attributes: namespaceURI, prefix and localName.
The ownerDocument attribute was specified to be null when the node is a Document. It now is also null when the node is a DocumentType which is not used with any Document yet.
Interface DocumentType
The DocumentType interface has three attributes: publicId, systemId and internalSubset.
Interface DOMImplementation
The DOMImplementation interface has two new methods: createDocumentType and createDocument.
Interface Element
The Element interface has eight new methods: getAttributeNS, setAttributeNS, removeAttributeNS, getAttributeNodeNS, setAttributeNodeNS, getElementsByTagNameNS, hasAttribute and hasAttributeNS.
The method normalize is now inherited from the Node interface where it was moved.
Exception DOMException
The DOMException has five new exception codes: INVALID_STATE_ERR, SYNTAX_ERR, INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR, NAMESPACE_ERR and INVALID_ACCESS_ERR.

A.2.2: New features

A.2.2.1: New types

DOMTimeStamp
The DOMTimeStamp type was added to the Core module.

09 April 2002

Appendix B: Namespaces Algorithms

Editor:
Arnaud Le Hors, IBM

B.1: Namespace normalization

Namespace declaration attributes and prefixes are normalized as part of the normalizeDocument method of the Document interface as if the following method described in pseudo code was called on the document element.

void Element.normalizeNamespaces()
{
  if ( Element's namespaceURI != null )
  {
    if ( Element's prefix/namespace pair (or default namespace,
         if no prefix) are within the scope of a binding )
    {
      ==> do nothing, declaration in scope is inherited
          See example 1
    }
    else
    {
      ==> Create a local namespace declaration attr for this namespace,
          with Element'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.
          See example 2
          // 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.
    }
  }
  else
  {
    // Element has no namespace URI:
    if ( Element has a colon in its name )
    {
       if ( Level 2 node )
       {
          ==> report an error 
       }
       else
       {
          // Level 1 node

          if ( Name is not a QName )
          {
             ==> report an error 
          }
          else
          {
             if ( Prefix is bound to something )
             {
                ==> report a warning
             }
             else
             {
                ==> report an error
             }
          }
       }
    }
    else
    {
      // Element has no namespace URI 
      // Element has no pseudo-prefix
      if ( default Namespace in scope is "no namespace" )
      {
        ==> do nothing, we're fine as we stand
      }
      else
      {
        if ( there's a conflicting local default namespace declaration
             already present )
        {
          ==> change its value to use this empty namespace.
          See example 3
        }
        else
        {
          ==> Set the default namespace to "no namespace" by creating or
          changing a local declaration attribute: xmlns="". 
          See example 4
        }
        // 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 Element )
  {
    if ( Attr[i] has a namespace URI )
    {
      if ( Attr has no prefix, or has a prefix that conflicts with
           a binding already active in scope )
      {
        if ( Element is in the scope of a non default binding for this
             namespace )
        {
          if ( one or more prefix bindings are available )
          {
            if ( one is locally defined )
            {
              ==> pick that one. 
            }
            else
            {
              ==> pick one arbitrarily 
            }
            ==> Change the Attr to use that prefix.
          }
          else
          {
            ==> Create a local namespace declaration attr for this namespace
            with a prefix not already used in the current scope and following
            the pattern "NS" + index (starting at 1).
            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.
          }
        }
      }
      else
      {
        // prefix does match but....

        if ( namespace is "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" AND attribute does
             not have the prefix "xmlns:" or the nodeName "xmlns" )
        {
          // While all Namespace Declarations belong to a reserved NSURI,
          // it is _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" )
          {
            if ( one is locally defined )
            {
              ==> pick that one. 
            }
            else
            {
              ==> pick one arbitrarily 
            }
            ==> Change the Attr to use that prefix.
          }
          else
          {
            ==> Create a local namespace declaration attr for this namespace
            with a prefix not already used in the current scope and following
            the pattern "NS" + index (starting at 1).
            Change the Attr to use this prefix.
     
            // NOTE that this may break other nodes within thisElement's
            // subtree, if they're already using this prefix.
            // They will be repaired when we reach them.
          }
          // end non-namespace-decl with namespace-decl URI
        }
      }
      // end namespaced Attr
    }
    else
    {
      // Attr[i] has no namespace URI
      if ( Attr[i] has a colon in its name )
      {
         if ( Level 2 node )
         {
            ==> report an error 
         }
         else
         {
            // Level 1 node
            if ( Name is not a QName )
            {
               ==> report an error 
            }
            else
            {
               if ( Prefix is bound to something )
               {
                  ==> report a warning
               }
               else
               {
                  ==> report an error
               }
            }
         }
      }
      else
      { 
        // attr has no namespace URI and no prefix
        // we're fine as we stand, since attrs don't use default
        ==> do nothing 
      }
    }
  } // end for-all-Attrs

  // do this recursively
  for ( all child elements of Element )
  {
    childElement.normalizeNamespaces()
  }
} // end Element.normalizeNamespaces
     

B.2: Namespace Prefix Lookup

The following describes in pseudo code the algorithm used in the lookupNamespacePrefix method of the Node interface.

DOMString lookupNamespacePrefix(in DOMString specifiedNamespaceURI,
                                in DOMString useDefault)
{
  switch (nodeType) {
  case ELEMENT_NODE:  
     if ( ( Element's namespaceURI == specifiedNamespaceURI ) and
          ( ( Element has prefix ) or
            ( Element has no prefix and
                 useDefault is true ) ) )
     {
          return Element's prefix
     }
     else if ( Element has an Attr and
               Attr's namespaceURI == "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and
               Attr's prefix == "xmlns" and
               Attr's value == specifiedNamespaceURI )
     {
          return Attr's localName.
     }
     else if ( Element has an Attr and
               Attr's namespaceURI == "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and
               Attr's localName == "xmlns" and
               Attr's value == specifiedNamespaceURI and
               useDefault is true )
     {
          return (null)
     }
     else if ( Element has an ancestor Element )
               // EntityReferences may have to be skipped to get to it
     {
          return ancestorElement.lookupNamespacePrefix(specifiedNamespaceURI,
                                                   useDefault)
     }
     else {
          return unknown (null)
     }    
  case DOCUMENT_NODE:
     return documentElement.lookupNamespacePrefix(specifiedNamespaceURI,
                                                  useDefault)
  case ENTITY_NODE:
  case NOTATION_NODE:
  case DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE:
  case DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE:
     return unknown (null);
  case ATTRIBUTE_NODE:
     if ( Attr has an owner Element )
     {          
          return ownerElement.lookupNamespacePrefix(specifiedNamespaceURI,
                                                    useDefault)
     }
     else {
          return unknown (null)
     }    
  default:
     if ( Node has an ancestor Element )
     {          
          return ancestorElement.lookupNamespacePrefix(specifiedNamespaceURI,
                                                       useDefault)
     }
     else {
          return unknown (null)
     }    
  }
}
     
Issue lookupNamespacePrefixAlgo-1:
Isn't the name the opposite of what it stands for?
Resolution: No.
Issue lookupNamespacePrefixAlgo-2:
How does one differentiate the case where it's the default namespace (prefix == null) from the case where the namespaceURI was not found?
Resolution: Use isDefaultNamespace.
Issue lookupNamespacePrefixAlgo-3:
How does one specify this is for an attribute and therefore the default namespace is not applicable?
Resolution: The algorithm goes directly to the owner element. Use useDefault to prevent using the default namespace.

B.3: Default Namespace Lookup

The following describes in pseudo code the algorithm used in the isDefaultNamespace method of the Node interface.

DOMString isDefaultNamespace(in DOMString specifiedNamespaceURI)
{
  switch (nodeType) {
  case ELEMENT_NODE:  
     if ( Element has no prefix )
     {
          return (Element's namespaceURI == specifiedNamespaceURI)
     }
     else if ( Element has an Attr and
               Attr's namespaceURI == "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and
               Attr's localName == "xmlns" )
     {
      return Attr's value == specifiedNamespaceURI
     }

     if ( Element has an ancestor Element )
               // EntityReferences may have to be skipped to get to it
     {
          return ancestorElement.isDefaultNamespace(specifiedNamespaceURI)
     }
     else {
          return unknown (null)
     }    
  case DOCUMENT_NODE:
     return documentElement.isDefaultNamespace(specifiedNamespaceURI)
  case ENTITY_NODE:
  case NOTATION_NODE:
  case DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE:
  case DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE:
     return unknown (null);
  case ATTRIBUTE_NODE:
     if ( Attr has an owner Element )
     {          
          return ownerElement.isDefaultNamespace(specifiedNamespaceURI)
     }
     else {
          return unknown (null)
     }    
  default:
     if ( Node has an ancestor Element )
     {          
          return ancestorElement.isDefaultNamespace(specifiedNamespaceURI)
     }
     else {
          return unknown (null)
     }    
  }
}
     

B.4: Namespace URI Lookup

The following describes in pseudo code the algorithm used in the lookupNamespaceURI method of the Node interface.

DOMString lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString specifiedPrefix)
{
  switch (nodeType) {
  case ELEMENT_NODE:
    return lookupNamespaceURI(specifiedPrefix, this);
  case DOCUMENT_NODE:
     return documentElement.lookupNamespaceURI(specifiedPrefix)
  case ENTITY_NODE:
  case NOTATION_NODE:
  case DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE:
  case DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE:
    return unknown (null)
  case ATTRIBUTE_NODE:
     if (Attr has an owner Element)
     {          
          return ownerElement.lookupNamespaceURI(specifiedPrefix)
     }
     else {
          return unknown (null)
     }    
  default:
     if (Node has an ancestor Element)
     {          
          return ancestorElement.lookupNamespaceURI(specifiedPrefix)
     }
     else {
          return unknown (null)
     }    
  }
}

DOMString lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString specifiedPrefix, Element el)
{
   if ( Element's namespace URI != null and
        Element's prefix == specifiedPrefix and
    specifiedPrefix != null and
        el.lookupNamespacePrefix(Element's namespace URI, false) == specifiedPrefix )
        return Element's namespace URI
   }
   else if ( Element's namespace URI != null and
        Element's prefix == specifiedPrefix and
    specifiedPrefix == null and
        el.lookupNamespacePrefix(Element's namespace URI, true) == null )
        return Element's namespace URI
   }
   else if ( Element has an Attr and
             Attr's namespaceURI == "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and
             Attr's prefix == "xmlns" and
             Attr's localName == specifiedPrefix and
             el.lookupNamespacePrefix(Attr's value URI, false) == specifiedPrefix )
   {
        return Attr's value.
   }
   else if ( Element has an Attr and
             Attr's namespaceURI == "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and
             Attr's localName == "xmlns" and
             specifiedPrefix == null and
             el.lookupNamespacePrefix(Attr's value URI, true) == null )
   {
        return Attr's value.
   }
   else if ( Element has an ancestor Element )
            // EntityReferences may have to be skipped to get to it
   {
        return ancestorElement.lookupNamespaceURI(specifiedPrefix, el)
   }
   else {
        return unknown (null)
   }
}
     
Issue lookupNamespaceURIAlgo-1:
How does one look for the default namespace?
Resolution: use lookupNamespaceURI(null)

09 April 2002

Appendix C: Accessing code point boundaries

Mark Davis, IBM
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc.

Table of contents

C.1: Introduction

This appendix is an informative, not a normative, part of the Level 2 DOM specification.

Characters are represented in Unicode by numbers called code points (also called scalar values). These numbers can range from 0 up to 1,114,111 = 10FFFF16 (although some of these values are illegal). Each code point can be directly encoded with a 32-bit code unit. This encoding is termed UCS-4 (or UTF-32). The DOM specification, however, uses UTF-16, in which the most frequent characters (which have values less than FFFF16) are represented by a single 16-bit code unit, while characters above FFFF16 use a special pair of code units called a surrogate pair. For more information, see [Unicode 2.0] or the Unicode Web site.

While indexing by code points as opposed to code units is not common in programs, some specifications such as XPath (and therefore XSLT and XPointer) use code point indices. For interfacing with such formats it is recommended that the programming language provide string processing methods for converting code point indices to code unit indices and back. Some languages do not provide these functions natively; for these it is recommended that the native String type that is bound to DOMString be extended to enable this conversion. An example of how such an API might look is supplied below.

Note: Since these methods are supplied as an illustrative example of the type of functionality that is required, the names of the methods, exceptions, and interface may differ from those given here.

C.2: Methods

Interface StringExtend

Extensions to a language's native String class or interface


IDL Definition
interface StringExtend {
  int                findOffset16(in int offset32)
                                        raises(StringIndexOutOfBoundsException);
  int                findOffset32(in int offset16)
                                        raises(StringIndexOutOfBoundsException);
};

Methods
findOffset16
Returns the UTF-16 offset that corresponds to a UTF-32 offset. Used for random access.

Note: You can always round-trip from a UTF-32 offset to a UTF-16 offset and back. You can round-trip from a UTF-16 offset to a UTF-32 offset and back if and only if the offset16 is not in the middle of a surrogate pair. Unmatched surrogates count as a single UTF-16 value.

Parameters
offset32 of type int
UTF-32 offset.
Return Value

int

UTF-16 offset

Exceptions

StringIndexOutOfBoundsException

if offset32 is out of bounds.

findOffset32
Returns the UTF-32 offset corresponding to a UTF-16 offset. Used for random access. To find the UTF-32 length of a string, use:
len32 = findOffset32(source, source.length());

Note: If the UTF-16 offset is into the middle of a surrogate pair, then the UTF-32 offset of the end of the pair is returned; that is, the index of the char after the end of the pair. You can always round-trip from a UTF-32 offset to a UTF-16 offset and back. You can round-trip from a UTF-16 offset to a UTF-32 offset and back if and only if the offset16 is not in the middle of a surrogate pair. Unmatched surrogates count as a single UTF-16 value.

Parameters
offset16 of type int
UTF-16 offset
Return Value

int

UTF-32 offset

Exceptions

StringIndexOutOfBoundsException

if offset16 is out of bounds.

09 April 2002

Appendix D: IDL Definitions

This appendix contains the complete OMG IDL [OMG IDL] for the Level 3 Document Object Model Core definitions.

The IDL files are also available as: http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20020409/idl.zip

dom.idl:

// File: dom.idl

#ifndef _DOM_IDL_
#define _DOM_IDL_

#pragma prefix "w3c.org"
module dom
{

  valuetype DOMString sequence<unsigned short>;

  typedef   unsigned long long DOMTimeStamp;

  typedef   Object DOMUserData;

  typedef   Object DOMObject;

  interface DOMImplementation;
  interface DocumentType;
  interface Document;
  interface NodeList;
  interface NamedNodeMap;
  interface UserDataHandler;
  interface Element;
  interface DOMLocator;

  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;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
  const unsigned short      VALIDATION_ERR                 = 16;


  interface DOMImplementationSource {
    DOMImplementation  getDOMImplementation(in DOMString features);
  };

  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  getInterface(in DOMString feature);
  };

  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;
    // Modified in DOM Level 3:
    Node               insertBefore(in Node newChild, 
                                    in Node refChild)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    // Modified in DOM Level 3:
    Node               replaceChild(in Node newChild, 
                                    in Node oldChild)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    // Modified in DOM Level 3:
    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;

    // TreePosition
    const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING        = 0x01;
    const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING        = 0x02;
    const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR         = 0x04;
    const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT       = 0x08;
    const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT       = 0x10;
    const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE        = 0x20;
    const unsigned short      TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED     = 0x00;

    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    unsigned short     compareTreePosition(in Node other);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
             attribute DOMString       textContent;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting
                                        // raises(DOMException) on retrieval

    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    boolean            isSameNode(in Node other);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    DOMString          lookupNamespacePrefix(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                             in boolean useDefault);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    boolean            isDefaultNamespace(in DOMString namespaceURI);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    DOMString          lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString prefix);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    boolean            isEqualNode(in Node arg);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    Node               getInterface(in DOMString feature);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    DOMUserData        setUserData(in DOMString key, 
                                   in DOMUserData data, 
                                   in UserDataHandler handler);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    DOMUserData        getUserData(in DOMString key);
  };

  interface NodeList {
    Node               item(in unsigned long index);
    readonly attribute unsigned long   length;
  };

  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);
  };

  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);
  };

  interface Attr : Node {
    readonly attribute DOMString       name;
    readonly attribute boolean         specified;
             attribute DOMString       value;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting

    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    readonly attribute Element         ownerElement;
  };

  interface Element : Node {
    readonly attribute DOMString       tagName;
    DOMString          getAttribute(in DOMString name);
    void               setAttribute(in DOMString name, 
                                    in DOMString value)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    void               removeAttribute(in DOMString name)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    Attr               getAttributeNode(in DOMString name);
    Attr               setAttributeNode(in Attr newAttr)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    Attr               removeAttributeNode(in Attr oldAttr)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    NodeList           getElementsByTagName(in DOMString name);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    DOMString          getAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                      in DOMString localName);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    void               setAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                      in DOMString qualifiedName, 
                                      in DOMString value)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    void               removeAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                         in DOMString localName)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    Attr               getAttributeNodeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                          in DOMString localName);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    Attr               setAttributeNodeNS(in Attr newAttr)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    NodeList           getElementsByTagNameNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                              in DOMString localName);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    boolean            hasAttribute(in DOMString name);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    boolean            hasAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                      in DOMString localName);
  };

  interface Text : CharacterData {
    Text               splitText(in unsigned long offset)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    readonly attribute boolean         isWhitespaceInElementContent;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    readonly attribute DOMString       wholeText;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    Text               replaceWholeText(in DOMString content)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  };

  interface Comment : CharacterData {
  };

  interface UserDataHandler {

    // OperationType
    const unsigned short      NODE_CLONED                    = 1;
    const unsigned short      NODE_IMPORTED                  = 2;
    const unsigned short      NODE_DELETED                   = 3;
    const unsigned short      NODE_RENAMED                   = 4;

    void               handle(in unsigned short operation, 
                              in DOMString key, 
                              in DOMObject data, 
                              in Node src, 
                              in Node dst);
  };

  interface DOMError {
    const unsigned short      SEVERITY_WARNING               = 0;
    const unsigned short      SEVERITY_ERROR                 = 1;
    const unsigned short      SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR           = 2;
    readonly attribute unsigned short  severity;
    readonly attribute DOMString       message;
    readonly attribute Object          relatedException;
    readonly attribute DOMLocator      location;
  };

  interface DOMErrorHandler {
    boolean            handleError(in DOMError error);
  };

  interface DOMLocator {
    readonly attribute long            lineNumber;
    readonly attribute long            columnNumber;
    readonly attribute long            offset;
    readonly attribute Node            errorNode;
    readonly attribute DOMString       uri;
  };

  interface CDATASection : Text {
  };

  interface DocumentType : Node {
    readonly attribute DOMString       name;
    readonly attribute NamedNodeMap    entities;
    readonly attribute NamedNodeMap    notations;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    readonly attribute DOMString       publicId;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    readonly attribute DOMString       systemId;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
    readonly attribute DOMString       internalSubset;
  };

  interface Notation : Node {
    readonly attribute DOMString       publicId;
    readonly attribute DOMString       systemId;
  };

  interface Entity : Node {
    readonly attribute DOMString       publicId;
    readonly attribute DOMString       systemId;
    readonly attribute DOMString       notationName;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
             attribute DOMString       actualEncoding;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
             attribute DOMString       encoding;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
             attribute DOMString       version;
  };

  interface EntityReference : Node {
  };

  interface ProcessingInstruction : Node {
    readonly attribute DOMString       target;
             attribute DOMString       data;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting

  };

  interface DocumentFragment : Node {
  };

  interface Document : Node {
    // Modified in DOM Level 3:
    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 DOMString       version;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting

    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
             attribute boolean         strictErrorChecking;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
             attribute DOMErrorHandler errorHandler;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
             attribute DOMString       documentURI;
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    Node               adoptNode(in Node source)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    void               normalizeDocument();
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    boolean            canSetNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name, 
                                                  in boolean state);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    void               setNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name, 
                                               in boolean state)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    boolean            getNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name)
                                        raises(DOMException);
    // Introduced in DOM Level 3:
    Node               renameNode(in Node n, 
                                  in DOMString namespaceURI, 
                                  in DOMString name)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  };
};

#endif // _DOM_IDL_

09 April 2002

Appendix E: Java Language Binding

This appendix contains the complete Java [Java] bindings for the Level 3 Document Object Model Core.

The Java files are also available as http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20020409/java-binding.zip

E.1: Java Binding Extension

This section defines the DOMImplementationRegistry object, discussed in Bootstrapping, for Java.

The DOMImplementationRegistry is first initialized by the application or the implementation, depending on the context, through the Java system property "org.w3c.dom.DOMImplementationSourceList". The value of this property is a space separated list of names of available classes implementing the DOMImplementationSource interface.

org/w3c/dom/DOMImplementationRegistry.java:

package org.w3c.dom; 

import java.util.StringTokenizer;
import java.util.Vector;

/**
 * This class holds the list of registered DOMImplementations. It is first
 * initialized based on the content of the space separated list of classnames
 * contained in the System Property "org.w3c.dom.DOMImplementationSourceList".
 *
 * <p>Subsequently, additional sources can be registered and implementations
 * can be queried based on a list of requested features.
 *
 * <p>This provides an application with an implementation independent starting
 * point.
 *
 * @see DOMImplementation
 * @see DOMImplementationSource
 */
public class DOMImplementationRegistry 
{ 

    // The system property to specify the DOMImplementationSource class names. 
    public static String PROPERTY = "org.w3c.dom.DOMImplementationSourceList";

    private static Vector sources = new Vector();
    private static boolean initialized = false;

    private static void initialize() throws ClassNotFoundException,
        InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException
    {
        initialized = true;
        String p = System.getProperty(PROPERTY);
        if (p == null) {
            return;
        }
        StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(p);
        while (st.hasMoreTokens()) {
            Object source = Class.forName(st.nextToken()).newInstance();
            sources.addElement(source);
        }
    }

    /**
     * Return the first registered implementation that has the desired features,
     * or null if none is found.
     *
     * @param features A string that specifies which features are required.
     *                 This is a space separated list in which each feature is
     *                 specified by its name optionally followed by a space
     *                 and a version number.
     *                 This is something like: "XML 1.0 Traversal Events 2.0"
     * @return An implementation that has the desired features, or
     *   <code>null</code> if this source has none.
     */
    public static DOMImplementation getDOMImplementation(String features)
        throws ClassNotFoundException,
        InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException
    {
        if (!initialized) {
            initialize();
        }
        int len = sources.size(); 
        for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
            DOMImplementationSource source =
                (DOMImplementationSource) sources.elementAt(i);

            DOMImplementation impl = source.getDOMImplementation(features);
            if (impl != null) {
                return impl;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

    /**
     * Register an implementation.
     */
    public static void addSource(DOMImplementationSource s)
        throws ClassNotFoundException,
        InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException
    {
        if (!initialized) {
            initialize();
        }
        sources.addElement(s);
        // update system property accordingly
        StringBuffer b = new StringBuffer(System.getProperty(PROPERTY));
        b.append(" " + s.getClass().getName());
        System.setProperty(PROPERTY, b.toString());
    }
}
 

With this, the first line of an application typically becomes something like (modulo exception handling):

    DOMImplementation impl = DOMImplementationRegistry.getDOMImplementation("XML 1.0");
 
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-1:
Should this provides for handling more than one implementation at a time?
Resolution: Yes.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-2:
Should this be even simpler and force the implementation to provide this class (and not necessarily rely on any system property)?
Resolution: No.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-3:
This requires all DOMImplementationSources to be pre-instantiated.
Resolution: Proposed: It's ok.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-4:
Some people may like to be able to enumerate available implementations. DOMImplementation objects may be too dynamic to enumerate. We should explore any significant use case that cannot be solved by this proposal.
Resolution: No real need. Additional features can be used to further differentiate implementations.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-5:
A space-separated feature string may not be the optimal way to pass a feature list. It was motivated by the lack of an array construct.
Resolution: Proposed: It's ok.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-6:
Should "*" given as the version number be interpreted as "any version". hasFeature() does not allow this, it requires a specific version to be given.
Resolution: No. (telcon xxxx)

E.2: Other Core interfaces

org/w3c/dom/DOMException.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public class DOMException extends RuntimeException {
    public DOMException(short code, String message) {
       super(message);
       this.code = code;
    }
    public short   code;
    // ExceptionCode
    public static final short INDEX_SIZE_ERR            = 1;
    public static final short DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR        = 2;
    public static final short HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR     = 3;
    public static final short WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR        = 4;
    public static final short INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR     = 5;
    public static final short NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR       = 6;
    public static final short NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR = 7;
    public static final short NOT_FOUND_ERR             = 8;
    public static final short NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR         = 9;
    public static final short INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR       = 10;
    public static final short INVALID_STATE_ERR         = 11;
    public static final short SYNTAX_ERR                = 12;
    public static final short INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR  = 13;
    public static final short NAMESPACE_ERR             = 14;
    public static final short INVALID_ACCESS_ERR        = 15;
    public static final short VALIDATION_ERR            = 16;

}

org/w3c/dom/DOMImplementationSource.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface DOMImplementationSource {
    public DOMImplementation getDOMImplementation(String features);

}

org/w3c/dom/DOMImplementation.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface DOMImplementation {
    public boolean hasFeature(String feature, 
                              String version);

    public DocumentType createDocumentType(String qualifiedName, 
                                           String publicId, 
                                           String systemId)
                                           throws DOMException;

    public Document createDocument(String namespaceURI, 
                                   String qualifiedName, 
                                   DocumentType doctype)
                                   throws DOMException;

    public DOMImplementation getInterface(String feature);

}

org/w3c/dom/DocumentFragment.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface DocumentFragment extends Node {
}

org/w3c/dom/Document.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface Document extends Node {
    public DocumentType getDoctype();

    public DOMImplementation getImplementation();

    public Element getDocumentElement();

    public Element createElement(String tagName)
                                 throws DOMException;

    public DocumentFragment createDocumentFragment();

    public Text createTextNode(String data);

    public Comment createComment(String data);

    public CDATASection createCDATASection(String data)
                                           throws DOMException;

    public ProcessingInstruction createProcessingInstruction(String target, 
                                                             String data)
                                                             throws DOMException;

    public Attr createAttribute(String name)
                                throws DOMException;

    public EntityReference createEntityReference(String name)
                                                 throws DOMException;

    public NodeList getElementsByTagName(String tagname);

    public Node importNode(Node importedNode, 
                           boolean deep)
                           throws DOMException;

    public Element createElementNS(String namespaceURI, 
                                   String qualifiedName)
                                   throws DOMException;

    public Attr createAttributeNS(String namespaceURI, 
                                  String qualifiedName)
                                  throws DOMException;

    public NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(String namespaceURI, 
                                           String localName);

    public Element getElementById(String elementId);

    public String getActualEncoding();
    public void setActualEncoding(String actualEncoding);

    public String getEncoding();
    public void setEncoding(String encoding);

    public boolean getStandalone();
    public void setStandalone(boolean standalone);

    public String getVersion();
    public void setVersion(String version)
                                  throws DOMException;

    public boolean getStrictErrorChecking();
    public void setStrictErrorChecking(boolean strictErrorChecking);

    public DOMErrorHandler getErrorHandler();
    public void setErrorHandler(DOMErrorHandler errorHandler);

    public String getDocumentURI();
    public void setDocumentURI(String documentURI);

    public Node adoptNode(Node source)
                          throws DOMException;

    public void normalizeDocument();

    public boolean canSetNormalizationFeature(String name, 
                                              boolean state);

    public void setNormalizationFeature(String name, 
                                        boolean state)
                                        throws DOMException;

    public boolean getNormalizationFeature(String name)
                                           throws DOMException;

    public Node renameNode(Node n, 
                           String namespaceURI, 
                           String name)
                           throws DOMException;

}

org/w3c/dom/Node.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface Node {
    // NodeType
    public static final short ELEMENT_NODE              = 1;
    public static final short ATTRIBUTE_NODE            = 2;
    public static final short TEXT_NODE                 = 3;
    public static final short CDATA_SECTION_NODE        = 4;
    public static final short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE     = 5;
    public static final short ENTITY_NODE               = 6;
    public static final short PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE = 7;
    public static final short COMMENT_NODE              = 8;
    public static final short DOCUMENT_NODE             = 9;
    public static final short DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE        = 10;
    public static final short DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE    = 11;
    public static final short NOTATION_NODE             = 12;

    public String getNodeName();

    public String getNodeValue()
                           throws DOMException;
    public void setNodeValue(String nodeValue)
                           throws DOMException;

    public short getNodeType();

    public Node getParentNode();

    public NodeList getChildNodes();

    public Node getFirstChild();

    public Node getLastChild();

    public Node getPreviousSibling();

    public Node getNextSibling();

    public NamedNodeMap getAttributes();

    public Document getOwnerDocument();

    public Node insertBefore(Node newChild, 
                             Node refChild)
                             throws DOMException;

    public Node replaceChild(Node newChild, 
                             Node oldChild)
                             throws DOMException;

    public Node removeChild(Node oldChild)
                            throws DOMException;

    public Node appendChild(Node newChild)
                            throws DOMException;

    public boolean hasChildNodes();

    public Node cloneNode(boolean deep);

    public void normalize();

    public boolean isSupported(String feature, 
                               String version);

    public String getNamespaceURI();

    public String getPrefix();
    public void setPrefix(String prefix)
                               throws DOMException;

    public String getLocalName();

    public boolean hasAttributes();

    public String getBaseURI();

    // TreePosition
    public static final short TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING   = 0x01;
    public static final short TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING   = 0x02;
    public static final short TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR    = 0x04;
    public static final short TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT  = 0x08;
    public static final short TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT  = 0x10;
    public static final short TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE   = 0x20;
    public static final short TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED = 0x00;

    public short compareTreePosition(Node other);

    public String getTextContent()
                                     throws DOMException;
    public void setTextContent(String textContent)
                                     throws DOMException;

    public boolean isSameNode(Node other);

    public String lookupNamespacePrefix(String namespaceURI, 
                                        boolean useDefault);

    public boolean isDefaultNamespace(String namespaceURI);

    public String lookupNamespaceURI(String prefix);

    public boolean isEqualNode(Node arg);

    public Node getInterface(String feature);

    public Object setUserData(String key, 
                              Object data, 
                              UserDataHandler handler);

    public Object getUserData(String key);

}

org/w3c/dom/NodeList.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface NodeList {
    public Node item(int index);

    public int getLength();

}

org/w3c/dom/NamedNodeMap.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface NamedNodeMap {
    public Node getNamedItem(String name);

    public Node setNamedItem(Node arg)
                             throws DOMException;

    public Node removeNamedItem(String name)
                                throws DOMException;

    public Node item(int index);

    public int getLength();

    public Node getNamedItemNS(String namespaceURI, 
                               String localName);

    public Node setNamedItemNS(Node arg)
                               throws DOMException;

    public Node removeNamedItemNS(String namespaceURI, 
                                  String localName)
                                  throws DOMException;

}

org/w3c/dom/CharacterData.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface CharacterData extends Node {
    public String getData()
                                  throws DOMException;
    public void setData(String data)
                                  throws DOMException;

    public int getLength();

    public String substringData(int offset, 
                                int count)
                                throws DOMException;

    public void appendData(String arg)
                           throws DOMException;

    public void insertData(int offset, 
                           String arg)
                           throws DOMException;

    public void deleteData(int offset, 
                           int count)
                           throws DOMException;

    public void replaceData(int offset, 
                            int count, 
                            String arg)
                            throws DOMException;

}

org/w3c/dom/Attr.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface Attr extends Node {
    public String getName();

    public boolean getSpecified();

    public String getValue();
    public void setValue(String value)
                            throws DOMException;

    public Element getOwnerElement();

}

org/w3c/dom/Element.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface Element extends Node {
    public String getTagName();

    public String getAttribute(String name);

    public void setAttribute(String name, 
                             String value)
                             throws DOMException;

    public void removeAttribute(String name)
                                throws DOMException;

    public Attr getAttributeNode(String name);

    public Attr setAttributeNode(Attr newAttr)
                                 throws DOMException;

    public Attr removeAttributeNode(Attr oldAttr)
                                    throws DOMException;

    public NodeList getElementsByTagName(String name);

    public String getAttributeNS(String namespaceURI, 
                                 String localName);

    public void setAttributeNS(String namespaceURI, 
                               String qualifiedName, 
                               String value)
                               throws DOMException;

    public void removeAttributeNS(String namespaceURI, 
                                  String localName)
                                  throws DOMException;

    public Attr getAttributeNodeNS(String namespaceURI, 
                                   String localName);

    public Attr setAttributeNodeNS(Attr newAttr)
                                   throws DOMException;

    public NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(String namespaceURI, 
                                           String localName);

    public boolean hasAttribute(String name);

    public boolean hasAttributeNS(String namespaceURI, 
                                  String localName);

}

org/w3c/dom/Text.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface Text extends CharacterData {
    public Text splitText(int offset)
                          throws DOMException;

    public boolean getIsWhitespaceInElementContent();

    public String getWholeText();

    public Text replaceWholeText(String content)
                                 throws DOMException;

}

org/w3c/dom/Comment.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface Comment extends CharacterData {
}

org/w3c/dom/UserDataHandler.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface UserDataHandler {
    // OperationType
    public static final short NODE_CLONED               = 1;
    public static final short NODE_IMPORTED             = 2;
    public static final short NODE_DELETED              = 3;
    public static final short NODE_RENAMED              = 4;

    public void handle(short operation, 
                       String key, 
                       Object data, 
                       Node src, 
                       Node dst);

}

org/w3c/dom/DOMError.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface DOMError {
    public static final short SEVERITY_WARNING          = 0;
    public static final short SEVERITY_ERROR            = 1;
    public static final short SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR      = 2;
    public short getSeverity();

    public String getMessage();

    public Object getRelatedException();

    public DOMLocator getLocation();

}

org/w3c/dom/DOMErrorHandler.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface DOMErrorHandler {
    public boolean handleError(DOMError error);

}

org/w3c/dom/DOMLocator.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface DOMLocator {
    public int getLineNumber();

    public int getColumnNumber();

    public int getOffset();

    public Node getErrorNode();

    public String getUri();

}

org/w3c/dom/CDATASection.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface CDATASection extends Text {
}

org/w3c/dom/DocumentType.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface DocumentType extends Node {
    public String getName();

    public NamedNodeMap getEntities();

    public NamedNodeMap getNotations();

    public String getPublicId();

    public String getSystemId();

    public String getInternalSubset();

}

org/w3c/dom/Notation.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface Notation extends Node {
    public String getPublicId();

    public String getSystemId();

}

org/w3c/dom/Entity.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface Entity extends Node {
    public String getPublicId();

    public String getSystemId();

    public String getNotationName();

    public String getActualEncoding();
    public void setActualEncoding(String actualEncoding);

    public String getEncoding();
    public void setEncoding(String encoding);

    public String getVersion();
    public void setVersion(String version);

}

org/w3c/dom/EntityReference.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface EntityReference extends Node {
}

org/w3c/dom/ProcessingInstruction.java:

package org.w3c.dom;

public interface ProcessingInstruction extends Node {
    public String getTarget();

    public String getData();
    public void setData(String data)
                               throws DOMException;

}

09 April 2002

Appendix F: ECMAScript Language Binding

This appendix contains the complete ECMAScript [ECMAScript] binding for the Level 3 Document Object Model Core definitions.

F.1: ECMAScript Binding Extension

This section defines the DOMImplementationRegistry object, discussed in Bootstrapping, for ECMAScript.

Objects that implements the DOMImplementationRegistry interface
DOMImplementationRegistry is a global variable which has the following functions:
getDOMImplementation(features)
This method returns the first registered object that implements the DOMImplementation interface and has the desired features, or null if none is found.
The features parameter is a String.
sources
This property is an Array. It contains all registered objects that implement the DOMImplementationSource interface.

F.2: Other Core interfaces

Properties of the DOMException Constructor function:
DOMException.INDEX_SIZE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INDEX_SIZE_ERR is 1.
DOMException.DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR is 2.
DOMException.HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR is 3.
DOMException.WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR is 4.
DOMException.INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR is 5.
DOMException.NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR is 6.
DOMException.NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR is 7.
DOMException.NOT_FOUND_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NOT_FOUND_ERR is 8.
DOMException.NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR is 9.
DOMException.INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR is 10.
DOMException.INVALID_STATE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INVALID_STATE_ERR is 11.
DOMException.SYNTAX_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.SYNTAX_ERR is 12.
DOMException.INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR is 13.
DOMException.NAMESPACE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NAMESPACE_ERR is 14.
DOMException.INVALID_ACCESS_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INVALID_ACCESS_ERR is 15.
DOMException.VALIDATION_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.VALIDATION_ERR is 16.
Objects that implement the DOMException interface:
Properties of objects that implement the DOMException interface:
code
This property is a Number.
Objects that implement the DOMImplementationSource interface:
Functions of objects that implement the DOMImplementationSource interface:
getDOMImplementation(features)
This function returns an object that implements the DOMImplementation interface.
The features parameter is a String.
Objects that implement the DOMImplementation interface:
Functions of objects that implement the DOMImplementation interface:
hasFeature(feature, version)
This function returns a Boolean.
The feature parameter is a String.
The version parameter is a String.
createDocumentType(qualifiedName, publicId, systemId)
This function returns an object that implements the DocumentType interface.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
The publicId parameter is a String.
The systemId parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
createDocument(namespaceURI, qualifiedName, doctype)
This function returns an object that implements the Document interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
The doctype parameter is an object that implements the DocumentType interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
getInterface(feature)
This function returns an object that implements the DOMImplementation interface.
The feature parameter is a String.
Objects that implement the DocumentFragment interface:
Objects that implement the DocumentFragment interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface.
Objects that implement the Document interface:
Objects that implement the Document interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Document interface:
doctype
This read-only property is an object that implements the DocumentType interface.
implementation
This read-only property is an object that implements the DOMImplementation interface.
documentElement
This read-only property is an object that implements the Element interface.
actualEncoding
This property is a String.
encoding
This property is a String.
standalone
This property is a Boolean.
version
This property is a String and can raise an objewct that implements DOMException interface on setting.
strictErrorChecking
This property is a Boolean.
errorHandler
This property is an object that implements the DOMErrorHandler interface.
documentURI
This property is a String.
Functions of objects that implement the Document interface:
createElement(tagName)
This function returns an object that implements the Element interface.
The tagName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
createDocumentFragment()
This function returns an object that implements the DocumentFragment interface.
createTextNode(data)
This function returns an object that implements the Text interface.
The data parameter is a String.
createComment(data)
This function returns an object that implements the Comment interface.
The data parameter is a String.
createCDATASection(data)
This function returns an object that implements the CDATASection interface.
The data parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
createProcessingInstruction(target, data)
This function returns an object that implements the ProcessingInstruction interface.
The target parameter is a String.
The data parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
createAttribute(name)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr interface.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
createEntityReference(name)
This function returns an object that implements the EntityReference interface.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
getElementsByTagName(tagname)
This function returns an object that implements the NodeList interface.
The tagname parameter is a String.
importNode(importedNode, deep)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The importedNode parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
The deep parameter is a Boolean.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
createElementNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName)
This function returns an object that implements the Element interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
createAttributeNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
getElementsByTagNameNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the NodeList interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
getElementById(elementId)
This function returns an object that implements the Element interface.
The elementId parameter is a String.
adoptNode(source)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The source parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
normalizeDocument()
This function has no return value.
canSetNormalizationFeature(name, state)
This function returns a Boolean.
The name parameter is a String.
The state parameter is a Boolean.
setNormalizationFeature(name, state)
This function has no return value.
The name parameter is a String.
The state parameter is a Boolean.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
getNormalizationFeature(name)
This function returns a Boolean.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
renameNode(n, namespaceURI, name)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The n parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
Properties of the Node Constructor function:
Node.ELEMENT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.ELEMENT_NODE is 1.
Node.ATTRIBUTE_NODE
The value of the constant Node.ATTRIBUTE_NODE is 2.
Node.TEXT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.TEXT_NODE is 3.
Node.CDATA_SECTION_NODE
The value of the constant Node.CDATA_SECTION_NODE is 4.
Node.ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
The value of the constant Node.ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE is 5.
Node.ENTITY_NODE
The value of the constant Node.ENTITY_NODE is 6.
Node.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
The value of the constant Node.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE is 7.
Node.COMMENT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.COMMENT_NODE is 8.
Node.DOCUMENT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.DOCUMENT_NODE is 9.
Node.DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
The value of the constant Node.DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE is 10.
Node.DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE is 11.
Node.NOTATION_NODE
The value of the constant Node.NOTATION_NODE is 12.
Node.TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING is 0x01.
Node.TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING is 0x02.
Node.TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR is 0x04.
Node.TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT is 0x08.
Node.TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT is 0x10.
Node.TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE is 0x20.
Node.TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED is 0x00.
Objects that implement the Node interface:
Properties of objects that implement the Node interface:
nodeName
This read-only property is a String.
nodeValue
This property is a String, can raise an object that implements DOMException interface on setting and can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface on retrieval.
nodeType
This read-only property is a Number.
parentNode
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node interface.
childNodes
This read-only property is an object that implements the NodeList interface.
firstChild
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node interface.
lastChild
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node interface.
previousSibling
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node interface.
nextSibling
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node interface.
attributes
This read-only property is an object that implements the NamedNodeMap interface.
ownerDocument
This read-only property is an object that implements the Document interface.
namespaceURI
This read-only property is a String.
prefix
This property is a String and can raise an objewct that implements DOMException interface on setting.
localName
This read-only property is a String.
baseURI
This read-only property is a String.
textContent
This property is a String, can raise an object that implements DOMException interface on setting and can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface on retrieval.
Functions of objects that implement the Node interface:
insertBefore(newChild, refChild)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The newChild parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
The refChild parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
replaceChild(newChild, oldChild)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The newChild parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
The oldChild parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
removeChild(oldChild)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The oldChild parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
appendChild(newChild)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The newChild parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
hasChildNodes()
This function returns a Boolean.
cloneNode(deep)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The deep parameter is a Boolean.
normalize()
This function has no return value.
isSupported(feature, version)
This function returns a Boolean.
The feature parameter is a String.
The version parameter is a String.
hasAttributes()
This function returns a Boolean.
compareTreePosition(other)
This function returns a Number.
The other parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
isSameNode(other)
This function returns a Boolean.
The other parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
lookupNamespacePrefix(namespaceURI, useDefault)
This function returns a String.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The useDefault parameter is a Boolean.
isDefaultNamespace(namespaceURI)
This function returns a Boolean.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
lookupNamespaceURI(prefix)
This function returns a String.
The prefix parameter is a String.
isEqualNode(arg)
This function returns a Boolean.
The arg parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
getInterface(feature)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The feature parameter is a String.
setUserData(key, data, handler)
This function returns an object that implements the any type interface.
The key parameter is a String.
The data parameter is an object that implements the any type interface.
The handler parameter is an object that implements the UserDataHandler interface.
getUserData(key)
This function returns an object that implements the any type interface.
The key parameter is a String.
Objects that implement the NodeList interface:
Properties of objects that implement the NodeList interface:
length
This read-only property is a Number.
Functions of objects that implement the NodeList interface:
item(index)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The index parameter is a Number.
Note: This object can also be dereferenced using square bracket notation (e.g. obj[1]). Dereferencing with an integer index is equivalent to invoking the item function with that index.
Objects that implement the NamedNodeMap interface:
Properties of objects that implement the NamedNodeMap interface:
length
This read-only property is a Number.
Functions of objects that implement the NamedNodeMap interface:
getNamedItem(name)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The name parameter is a String.
setNamedItem(arg)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The arg parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
removeNamedItem(name)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
item(index)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The index parameter is a Number.
Note: This object can also be dereferenced using square bracket notation (e.g. obj[1]). Dereferencing with an integer index is equivalent to invoking the item function with that index.
getNamedItemNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
setNamedItemNS(arg)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The arg parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
removeNamedItemNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the Node interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
Objects that implement the CharacterData interface:
Objects that implement the CharacterData interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the CharacterData interface:
data
This property is a String, can raise an object that implements DOMException interface on setting and can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface on retrieval.
length
This read-only property is a Number.
Functions of objects that implement the CharacterData interface:
substringData(offset, count)
This function returns a String.
The offset parameter is a Number.
The count parameter is a Number.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
appendData(arg)
This function has no return value.
The arg parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
insertData(offset, arg)
This function has no return value.
The offset parameter is a Number.
The arg parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
deleteData(offset, count)
This function has no return value.
The offset parameter is a Number.
The count parameter is a Number.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
replaceData(offset, count, arg)
This function has no return value.
The offset parameter is a Number.
The count parameter is a Number.
The arg parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
Objects that implement the Attr interface:
Objects that implement the Attr interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Attr interface:
name
This read-only property is a String.
specified
This read-only property is a Boolean.
value
This property is a String and can raise an objewct that implements DOMException interface on setting.
ownerElement
This read-only property is an object that implements the Element interface.
Objects that implement the Element interface:
Objects that implement the Element interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Element interface:
tagName
This read-only property is a String.
Functions of objects that implement the Element interface:
getAttribute(name)
This function returns a String.
The name parameter is a String.
setAttribute(name, value)
This function has no return value.
The name parameter is a String.
The value parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
removeAttribute(name)
This function has no return value.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
getAttributeNode(name)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr interface.
The name parameter is a String.
setAttributeNode(newAttr)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr interface.
The newAttr parameter is an object that implements the Attr interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
removeAttributeNode(oldAttr)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr interface.
The oldAttr parameter is an object that implements the Attr interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
getElementsByTagName(name)
This function returns an object that implements the NodeList interface.
The name parameter is a String.
getAttributeNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns a String.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
setAttributeNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName, value)
This function has no return value.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
The value parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
removeAttributeNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function has no return value.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
getAttributeNodeNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
setAttributeNodeNS(newAttr)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr interface.
The newAttr parameter is an object that implements the Attr interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
getElementsByTagNameNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the NodeList interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
hasAttribute(name)
This function returns a Boolean.
The name parameter is a String.
hasAttributeNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns a Boolean.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
Objects that implement the Text interface:
Objects that implement the Text interface have all properties and functions of the CharacterData interface as well as the properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Text interface:
isWhitespaceInElementContent
This read-only property is a Boolean.
wholeText
This read-only property is a String.
Functions of objects that implement the Text interface:
splitText(offset)
This function returns an object that implements the Text interface.
The offset parameter is a Number.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
replaceWholeText(content)
This function returns an object that implements the Text interface.
The content parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the DOMException interface.
Objects that implement the Comment interface:
Objects that implement the Comment interface have all properties and functions of the CharacterData interface.
Properties of the UserDataHandler Constructor function:
UserDataHandler.NODE_CLONED
The value of the constant UserDataHandler.NODE_CLONED is 1.
UserDataHandler.NODE_IMPORTED
The value of the constant UserDataHandler.NODE_IMPORTED is 2.
UserDataHandler.NODE_DELETED
The value of the constant UserDataHandler.NODE_DELETED is 3.
UserDataHandler.NODE_RENAMED
The value of the constant UserDataHandler.NODE_RENAMED is 4.
Objects that implement the UserDataHandler interface:
Functions of objects that implement the UserDataHandler interface:
handle(operation, key, data, src, dst)
This function has no return value.
The operation parameter is a Number.
The key parameter is a String.
The data parameter is an object that implements the Object interface.
The src parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
The dst parameter is an object that implements the Node interface.
Properties of the DOMError Constructor function:
DOMError.SEVERITY_WARNING
The value of the constant DOMError.SEVERITY_WARNING is 0.
DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR
The value of the constant DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR is 1.
DOMError.SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR
The value of the constant DOMError.SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR is 2.
Objects that implement the DOMError interface:
Properties of objects that implement the DOMError interface:
severity
This read-only property is a Number.
message
This read-only property is a String.
relatedException
This read-only property is an object that implements the Object interface.
location
This read-only property is an object that implements the DOMLocator interface.
Objects that implement the DOMErrorHandler interface:
Functions of objects that implement the DOMErrorHandler interface:
handleError(error)
This function returns a Boolean.
The error parameter is an object that implements the DOMError interface.
Objects that implement the DOMLocator interface:
Properties of objects that implement the DOMLocator interface:
lineNumber
This read-only property is a Number.
columnNumber
This read-only property is a Number.
offset
This read-only property is a Number.
errorNode
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node interface.
uri
This read-only property is a String.
Objects that implement the CDATASection interface:
Objects that implement the CDATASection interface have all properties and functions of the Text interface.
Objects that implement the DocumentType interface:
Objects that implement the DocumentType interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the DocumentType interface:
name
This read-only property is a String.
entities
This read-only property is an object that implements the NamedNodeMap interface.
notations
This read-only property is an object that implements the NamedNodeMap interface.
publicId
This read-only property is a String.
systemId
This read-only property is a String.
internalSubset
This read-only property is a String.
Objects that implement the Notation interface:
Objects that implement the Notation interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Notation interface:
publicId
This read-only property is a String.
systemId
This read-only property is a String.
Objects that implement the Entity interface:
Objects that implement the Entity interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Entity interface:
publicId
This read-only property is a String.
systemId
This read-only property is a String.
notationName
This read-only property is a String.
actualEncoding
This property is a String.
encoding
This property is a String.
version
This property is a String.
Objects that implement the EntityReference interface:
Objects that implement the EntityReference interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface.
Objects that implement the ProcessingInstruction interface:
Objects that implement the ProcessingInstruction interface have all properties and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the ProcessingInstruction interface:
target
This read-only property is a String.
data
This property is a String and can raise an objewct that implements DOMException interface on setting.

09 April 2002

Appendix G: Acknowledgements

Many people contributed to the DOM specifications (Level 1, 2 or 3), including members of the DOM Working Group and the DOM Interest Group. We especially thank the following:

Andrew Watson (Object Management Group), Andy Heninger (IBM), Angel Diaz (IBM), Arnaud Le Hors (W3C and IBM), Ashok Malhotra (IBM and Microsoft), Ben Chang (Oracle), Bill Smith (Sun), Bill Shea (Merrill Lynch), Bob Sutor (IBM), Chris Lovett (Microsoft), Chris Wilson (Microsoft), David Brownell (Sun), David Ezell (Hewlett Packard Company), David Singer (IBM), Dimitris Dimitriadis (Improve AB), Don Park (invited), Elena Litani (IBM), Eric Vasilik (Microsoft), Gavin Nicol (INSO), Ian Jacobs (W3C), James Clark (invited), James Davidson (Sun), Jared Sorensen (Novell), Jeroen van Rotterdam (X-Hive Corporation), Joe Kesselman (IBM), Joe Lapp (webMethods), Joe Marini (Macromedia), Johnny Stenback (Netscape/AOL), Jon Ferraiolo (Adobe), Jonathan Marsh (Microsoft), Jonathan Robie (Texcel Research and Software AG), Kim Adamson-Sharpe (SoftQuad Software Inc.), Lauren Wood (SoftQuad Software Inc., former chair), Laurence Cable (Sun), Mark Davis (IBM), Mark Scardina (Oracle), Martin Dürst (W3C), Mary Brady (NIST), Mick Goulish (Software AG), Mike Champion (Arbortext and Software AG), Miles Sabin (Cromwell Media), Patti Lutsky (Arbortext), Paul Grosso (Arbortext), Peter Sharpe (SoftQuad Software Inc.), Phil Karlton (Netscape), Philippe Le Hégaret (W3C, W3C team contact and Chair), Ramesh Lekshmynarayanan (Merrill Lynch), Ray Whitmer (iMall, Excite@Home, and Netscape/AOL), Rezaur Rahman (Intel), Rich Rollman (Microsoft), Rick Gessner (Netscape), Rick Jelliffe (invited), Rob Relyea (Microsoft), Scott Isaacs (Microsoft), Sharon Adler (INSO), Steve Byrne (JavaSoft), Tim Bray (invited), Tim Yu (Oracle), Tom Pixley (Netscape/AOL), Vidur Apparao (Netscape), Vinod Anupam (Lucent).

Thanks to all those who have helped to improve this specification by sending suggestions and corrections (Please, keep bugging us with your issues!).

G.1: Production Systems

This specification was written in XML. The HTML, OMG IDL, Java and ECMAScript bindings were all produced automatically.

Thanks to Joe English, author of cost, which was used as the basis for producing DOM Level 1. Thanks also to Gavin Nicol, who wrote the scripts which run on top of cost. Arnaud Le Hors and Philippe Le Hégaret maintained the scripts.

After DOM Level 1, we used Xerces as the basis DOM implementation and wish to thank the authors. Philippe Le Hégaret and Arnaud Le Hors wrote the Java programs which are the DOM application.

Thanks also to Jan Kärrman, author of html2ps, which we use in creating the PostScript version of the specification.

09 April 2002

Glossary

Editors:
Arnaud Le Hors, W3C
Robert S. Sutor, IBM Research (for DOM Level 1)

Several of the following term definitions have been borrowed or modified from similar definitions in other W3C or standards documents. See the links within the definitions for more information.

16-bit unit
The base unit of a DOMString. This indicates that indexing on a DOMString occurs in units of 16 bits. This must not be misunderstood to mean that a DOMString can store arbitrary 16-bit units. A DOMString is a character string encoded in UTF-16; this means that the restrictions of UTF-16 as well as the other relevant restrictions on character strings must be maintained. A single character, for example in the form of a numeric character reference, may correspond to one or two 16-bit units.
ancestor
An ancestor node of any node A is any node above A in a tree model of a document, where "above" means "toward the root."
API
An API is an Application Programming Interface, a set of functions or methods used to access some functionality.
child
A child is an immediate descendant node of a node.
client application
A [client] application is any software that uses the Document Object Model programming interfaces provided by the hosting implementation to accomplish useful work. Some examples of client applications are scripts within an HTML or XML document.
COM
COM is Microsoft's Component Object Model [COM], a technology for building applications from binary software components.
convenience
A convenience method is an operation on an object that could be accomplished by a program consisting of more basic operations on the object. Convenience methods are usually provided to make the API easier and simpler to use or to allow specific programs to create more optimized implementations for common operations. A similar definition holds for a convenience property.
data model
A data model is a collection of descriptions of data structures and their contained fields, together with the operations or functions that manipulate them.
descendant
A descendant node of any node A is any node below A in a tree model of a document, where "below" means "away from the root."
document element
There is only one document element in a Document. This element node is a child of the Document node. See Well-Formed XML Documents in XML [XML 1.0].
document order
There is an ordering, document order, defined on all the nodes in the document corresponding to the order in which the first character of the XML representation of each node occurs in the XML representation of the document after expansion of general entities. Thus, the document element node will be the first node. Element nodes occur before their children. Thus, document order orders element nodes in order of the occurrence of their start-tag in the XML (after expansion of entities). The attribute nodes of an element occur after the element and before its children. The relative order of attribute nodes is implementation-dependent.
ECMAScript
The programming language defined by the ECMA-262 standard [ECMAScript]. As stated in the standard, the originating technology for ECMAScript was JavaScript [JavaScript]. Note that in the ECMAScript binding, the word "property" is used in the same sense as the IDL term "attribute."
element
Each document contains one or more elements, the boundaries of which are either delimited by start-tags and end-tags, or, for empty elements by an empty-element tag. Each element has a type, identified by name, and may have a set of attributes. Each attribute has a name and a value. See Logical Structures in XML [XML 1.0].
information item
An information item is an abstract representation of some component of an XML document. See the [XML Information set] for details.
logically-adjacent text nodes
Logically-adjacent text nodes are Text or CDataSection nodes that may be visited sequentially in document order without entering, exiting, or passing over Element, Comment, or ProcessingInstruction nodes.
hosting implementation
A [hosting] implementation is a software module that provides an implementation of the DOM interfaces so that a client application can use them. Some examples of hosting implementations are browsers, editors and document repositories.
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used to create hypertext documents that are portable from one platform to another. HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for representing information from a wide range of applications. [HTML 4.01]
inheritance
In object-oriented programming, the ability to create new classes (or interfaces) that contain all the methods and properties of another class (or interface), plus additional methods and properties. If class (or interface) D inherits from class (or interface) B, then D is said to be derived from B. B is said to be a base class (or interface) for D. Some programming languages allow for multiple inheritance, that is, inheritance from more than one class or interface.
interface
An interface is a declaration of a set of methods with no information given about their implementation. In object systems that support interfaces and inheritance, interfaces can usually inherit from one another.
language binding
A programming language binding for an IDL specification is an implementation of the interfaces in the specification for the given language. For example, a Java language binding for the Document Object Model IDL specification would implement the concrete Java classes that provide the functionality exposed by the interfaces.
local name
A local name is the local part of a qualified name. This is called the local part in Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
method
A method is an operation or function that is associated with an object and is allowed to manipulate the object's data.
model
A model is the actual data representation for the information at hand. Examples are the structural model and the style model representing the parse structure and the style information associated with a document. The model might be a tree, or a directed graph, or something else.
namespace prefix
A namespace prefix is a string that associates an element or attribute name with a namespace URI in XML. See namespace prefix in Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
namespace URI
A namespace URI is a URI that identifies an XML namespace. This is called the namespace name in Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
object model
An object model is a collection of descriptions of classes or interfaces, together with their member data, member functions, and class-static operations.
parent
A parent is an immediate ancestor node of a node.
partially valid
A node in a DOM tree is partially valid if it is well formed (this part is for comments and processing instructions) and its immediate children are those expected by the content model. The node may be missing trailing required children yet still be considered partially valid.
qualified name
A qualified name is the name of an element or attribute defined as the concatenation of a local name (as defined in this specification), optionally preceded by a namespace prefix and colon character. See Qualified Names in Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
read only node
A read only node is a node that is immutable. This means its list of children, its content, and its attributes, when it is an element, cannot be changed in any way. However, a read only node can possibly be moved, when it is not itself contained in a read only node.
root node
The root node is a node that is not a child of any other node. All other nodes are children or other descendants of the root node.
sibling
Two nodes are siblings if they have the same parent node.
string comparison
When string matching is required, it is to occur as though the comparison was between 2 sequences of code points from [Unicode 2.0].
token
An information item such as an XML Name which has been tokenized.
tokenized
The description given to various information items (for example, attribute values of various types, but not including the StringType CDATA) after having been processed by the XML processor. The process includes stripping leading and trailing white space, and replacing multiple space characters by one. See the definition of tokenized type.
well-formed document
A document is well-formed if it is tag valid and entities are limited to single elements (i.e., single sub-trees).
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is an extremely simple dialect of SGML which is completely described in this document. The goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML. [XML 1.0]
XML name
See XML name in the XML specification ([XML 1.0]).
XML namespace
An XML namespace is a collection of names, identified by a URI reference [IETF RFC 2396], which are used in XML documents as element types and attribute names. [XML Namespaces]

09 April 2002

References

For the latest version of any W3C specification please consult the list of W3C Technical Reports available at http://www.w3.org/TR.

I.1: Normative references

[CharModel]
Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0, M. D¨rst, et al., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, January 2001. This version of the Character Model for the World Wide Web Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-charmod-20020220. The latest version of Character Model is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/charmod.
[DOM Level 1]
DOM Level 1 Specification, V. Apparao, et al., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 1 October 1998. This version of the DOM Level 1 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-DOM-Level-1-19981001. The latest version of DOM Level 1 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1.
[DOM Level 2 Core]
Document Object Model Level 2 Core Specification, A. Le Hors, et al., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 13 November 2000. This version of the DOM Level 2 Core Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Core-20001113. The latest version of DOM Level 2 Core is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Core.
[ECMAScript]
ECMAScript Language Specification, Third Edition. European Computer Manufacturers Association, December 1999. This version of the ECMAScript Language is available at http://www.ecma.ch/ecma1/STAND/ECMA-262.HTM.
[ISO/IEC 10646]
ISO/IEC 10646-1993 (E). Information technology - Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) - Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane. [Geneva]: International Organization for Standardization, 1993 (plus amendments AM 1 through AM 7).
[Java]
The Java Language Specification, J. Gosling, B. Joy, and G. Steele, Authors. Addison-Wesley, September 1996. Available at http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls
[OMG IDL]
"OMG IDL Syntax and Semantics" defined in The Common Object Request Broker: Architecture and Specification, version 2, Object Management Group. The latest version of CORBA version 2.0 is available at http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/formal/corba_2.htm.
[Unicode 2.0]
The Unicode Standard, Version 2.0.. The Unicode Consortium, 1996. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Developers Press. ISBN 0-201-48345-9.
[XML 1.0]
Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Second Edition), T. Bray, J. Paoli, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, and E. Maler, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 10 February 1998, revised 6 October 2000. This version of the XML 1.0 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xml-20001006. The latest version of XML 1.0 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml.
[XML Base]
XML Base, J. Marsh, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, June 2001. This version of the XML Base Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase. The latest version of XML Base is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase.
[XML Information set]
XML Information Set, J. Cowan and R. Tobin, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 24 October 2001. This version of the XML Information Set Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xml-infoset-20011024. The latest version of XML Information Set is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset.
[XML Namespaces]
Namespaces in XML, T. Bray, D. Hollander, and A. Layman, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 14 January 1999. This version of the XML Information Set Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114. The latest version of Namespaces in XML is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names.

I.2: Informative references

[Canonical XML]
Canonical XML Version 1.0, J. Boyer, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, 15 March 2001. This version of the Canonical XML Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xml-c14n-20010315. The latest version of Canonical XML is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-c14n.
[COM]
The Microsoft Component Object Model, Microsoft Corporation. Available at http://www.microsoft.com/com.
[CORBA]
The Common Object Request Broker: Architecture and Specification, version 2. Object Management Group. The latest version of CORBA version 2.0 is available at http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/formal/corba_2.htm.
[DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save]
Document Object Model Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save Specification, B. Chang, J. Stenback, J. van Rotterdam, A. Heninger, J. Kesselman, R. Rahman, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, January 2002. This version of the DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-ASLS. The latest version of DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-ASLS.
[DOM Level 3 Events]
Document Object Model Level 3 Events Specification, T. Pixley, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, February 2002. This version of the Document Object Model Level 3 Events Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events. The latest version of Document Object Model Level 3 Events is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events.
[DOM Level 2 HTML]
Document Object Model Level 2 HTML Specification, J. Stenback, et al., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, December 2001. This version of the Document Object Model Level 2 HTML Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20011210. The latest version of Document Object Model Level 2 HTML is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-HTML.
[DOM Level 3 XPath]
Document Object Model Level 3 XPath Specification, R. Whitmer, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, February 2002. This version of the Document Object Model Level 3 XPath Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-XPath. The latest version of Document Object Model Level 3 XPath is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-XPath.
[HTML 4.01]
HTML 4.01 Specification, D. Raggett, A. Le Hors, and I. Jacobs, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 17 December 1997, revised 24 April 1998, revised 24 December 1999. This version of the HTML 4.01 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424. The latest version of HTML 4 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/html4.
[Java IDL]
Java IDL. Sun Microsystems. Available at http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/idl
[JavaScript]
JavaScript Resources. Netscape Communications Corporation. Available at http://developer.netscape.com/tech/javascript/resources.html
[JScript]
JScript Resources. Microsoft. Available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/default.htm
[MathML 2.0]
Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 2.0, D. Carlisle, P. Ion, R. Miner, N. Poppelier, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 21 February 2001. This version of the Math 2.0 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2. The latest version of MathML 2.0 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2.
[MIDL]
MIDL Language Reference. Microsoft. Available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/midl/mi-laref_1r1h.htm.
[IETF RFC 2396]
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L. Masinter, Authors. Internet Engineering Task Force, August 1998. Available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt.
[SVG 1.0]
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 Specification, J. Ferraiolo, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, 4 September 2001. This version of the SVG 1.0 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG. The latest version of SVG 1.0 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG.
[XML 1.1]
XML 1.1, J. Cowan, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, 13 December 2001. This version of the XML 1.1 Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xml11-20011213/. The latest version of XML 1.1 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11.
[XPointer]
XML Pointer Language (XPointer) Version 1.0, S. DeRose, E. Maler, and R. Daniel Jr., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, September 2001. This version of the XPath 1.0 Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xptr-20010911. The latest version of XPointer 1.0 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr.

09 April 2002

Index

16-bit unit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
 
[attributes] [base URI] [character encoding scheme]
[character code] [children] [content] 1, 2
[declaration base URI] [document element] [element content whitespace]
[in-scope namespaces] [local name] [namespace attributes]
[namespace name] [normalized value] [notations]
[owner element] [parent] [prefix]
[public identifier] 1, 2, 3 [specified] [standalone]
[system identifier] 1, 2, 3 [target] [version]
 
actualEncoding 1, 2 adoptNode ancestor 1, 2, 3, 4
API 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 appendChild appendData
Attr ATTRIBUTE_NODE attributes
 
baseURI
 
Canonical XML 1, 2 canSetNormalizationFeature CDATA_SECTION_NODE
CDATASection CharacterData CharModel 1, 2, 3
child 1, 2, 3 childNodes client application 1, 2
cloneNode columnNumber COM 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Comment COMMENT_NODE compareTreePosition
convenience 1, 2, 3 CORBA 1, 2 createAttribute
createAttributeNS createCDATASection createComment
createDocument createDocumentFragment createDocumentType
createElement createElementNS createEntityReference
createProcessingInstruction createTextNode
 
data 1, 2 data model 1, 2 deleteData
descendant 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 doctype Document
document element 1, 2 document order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
DOCUMENT_NODE DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE documentElement
DocumentFragment DocumentType documentURI
DOM Level 1 1, 2 DOM Level 2 Core 1, 2, 3, 4 DOM Level 2 HTML 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 DOM Level 3 Events 1, 2 DOM Level 3 XPath 1, 2, 3, 4
DOMError DOMErrorHandler DOMException
DOMImplementation DOMImplementationSource DOMLocator
DOMObject DOMString DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR
DOMTimeStamp DOMUserData
 
ECMAScript 1, 2, 3, 4 Element 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ELEMENT_NODE
encoding 1, 2 entities Entity
ENTITY_NODE ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE EntityReference
errorHandler errorNode
 
firstChild
 
getAttribute getAttributeNode getAttributeNodeNS
getAttributeNS getDOMImplementation getElementById
getElementsByTagName 1, 2 getElementsByTagNameNS 1, 2 getInterface 1, 2
getNamedItem getNamedItemNS getNormalizationFeature
getUserData
 
handle handleError hasAttribute
hasAttributeNS hasAttributes hasChildNodes
hasFeature HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR hosting implementation 1, 2
HTML 1, 2 HTML 4.01 1, 2
 
IETF RFC 2396 1, 2 implementation importNode
INDEX_SIZE_ERR information item 1, 2 inheritance 1, 2
insertBefore insertData interface 1, 2
internalSubset INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR INVALID_ACCESS_ERR
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR INVALID_STATE_ERR
isDefaultNamespace isEqualNode ISO/IEC 10646 1, 2
isSameNode isSupported isWhitespaceInElementContent
item 1, 2
 
Java 1, 2 Java IDL 1, 2 JavaScript 1, 2, 3
JScript 1, 2
 
language binding 1, 2 lastChild length 1, 2, 3
lineNumber live 1, 2, 3 local name 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
localName location logically-adjacent text nodes 1, 2, 3
lookupNamespacePrefix lookupNamespaceURI
 
MathML 2.0 1, 2 message method 1, 2
MIDL 1, 2 model 1, 2
 
name 1, 2 NamedNodeMap namespace prefix 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
namespace URI 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 NAMESPACE_ERR namespaceURI
nextSibling NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
Node NODE_CLONED NODE_DELETED
NODE_IMPORTED NODE_RENAMED NodeList
nodeName nodeType nodeValue
normalize normalizeDocument NOT_FOUND_ERR
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR Notation NOTATION_NODE
notationName notations
 
object model 1, 2, 3 offset OMG IDL 1, 2, 3
ownerDocument ownerElement
 
parent 1, 2 parentNode partially valid 1, 2
prefix previousSibling PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
ProcessingInstruction publicId 1, 2, 3
 
qualified name 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
 
read only node 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 relatedException removeAttribute
removeAttributeNode removeAttributeNS removeChild
removeNamedItem removeNamedItemNS renameNode
replaceChild replaceData replaceWholeText
root node 1, 2
 
setAttribute setAttributeNode setAttributeNodeNS
setAttributeNS setNamedItem setNamedItemNS
setNormalizationFeature setUserData severity
SEVERITY_ERROR SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR SEVERITY_WARNING
sibling 1, 2, 3 specified splitText
standalone strictErrorChecking string comparison 1, 2, 3
substringData SVG 1.0 1, 2 SYNTAX_ERR
systemId 1, 2, 3
 
tagName target Text
TEXT_NODE textContent token 1, 2
tokenized 1, 2 TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT
TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING
TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE
 
Unicode 2.0 1, 2, 3 uri UserDataHandler
 
VALIDATION_ERR value version 1, 2
 
well-formed document 1, 2 wholeText WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
 
XML 1, 2 XML 1.0 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 XML 1.1 1, 2
XML Base 1, 2 XML Information set 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 XML name 1, 2
XML namespace 1, 2 XML Namespaces 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 XPointer 1, 2