Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Validation Specification 1.0 WD-DOM-Level-3-Val-20030205 W3C Working Draft 05 February 2003 http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-DOM-Level-3-Val-20030205 XML file plain text PostScript file PDF file single HTML file ZIP file http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Val http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Val-20021008 Ben Chang Oracle Joe Kesselman IBM (until September 2001) Rezaur Rahman Intel Corporation (until July 2001)

This specification defines the Document Object Model Validation Level 3, a platform- and language-neutral interface. This module provides the guidance to programs and scripts to dynamically update the content and the structure of documents while ensuring that the document remains valid, or to ensure that the document becomes valid.

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 is the Working Draft specification of "DOM Level 3 Validation". This version is based on the feedback during the last call period. The intention of the Working Group is to ask the Director to move the document to Candidate Recommendation status soon. 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/.

Individuals or organizations are also invited to send a message to the public mailing list if they intend to produce an implementation of this module.

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.

This document has been produced as part of the W3C DOM Activity. The authors of this document are the DOM WG members.

Patent disclosures relevant to this specification may be found on the Working Group's patent disclosure page.

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

Created in electronic form.

 English

$Revision: 1.4 $
Expanded Table of Contents W3C Copyright Notices and Licenses

Copyright © 2003 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.

This document is published under the . The bindings within this document are published under the . 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.

W3C® Document Copyright Notice and License

This section is a copy of the W3C® Document Notice and License and could be found at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-documents-20021231.

Copyright © 2003 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-documents-20021231

Public documents on the W3C site are provided by the copyright holders under the following license. By using and/or copying this document, or the W3C document from which this statement is linked, you (the licensee) agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms and conditions:

Permission to copy, and distribute the contents of this document, or the W3C document from which this statement is linked, in any medium for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that you include the following on ALL copies of the document, or portions thereof, that you use:

A link or URL to the original W3C document.

The pre-existing copyright notice of the original author, or if it doesn't exist, a notice (hypertext is preferred, but a textual representation is permitted) of the form: "Copyright © [$date-of-document] World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-documents-20021231"

If it exists, the STATUS of the W3C document.

When space permits, inclusion of the full text of this NOTICE should be provided. We request that authorship attribution be provided in any software, documents, or other items or products that you create pursuant to the implementation of the contents of this document, or any portion thereof.

No right to create modifications or derivatives of W3C documents is granted pursuant to this license. However, if additional requirements (documented in the Copyright FAQ) are satisfied, the right to create modifications or derivatives is sometimes granted by the W3C to individuals complying with those requirements.

THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS," AND COPYRIGHT HOLDERS MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, OR TITLE; THAT THE CONTENTS OF THE DOCUMENT ARE SUITABLE FOR ANY PURPOSE; NOR THAT THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SUCH CONTENTS WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS.

COPYRIGHT HOLDERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY USE OF THE DOCUMENT OR THE PERFORMANCE OR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CONTENTS THEREOF.

The name and trademarks of copyright holders may NOT be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to this document or its contents without specific, written prior permission. Title to copyright in this document will at all times remain with copyright holders.

W3C® Software Copyright Notice and License

This section is a copy of the W3C® Software Copyright Notice and License and could be found at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231

Copyright © 2003 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231

This work (and included software, documentation such as READMEs, or other related items) is being provided by the copyright holders under the following license. By obtaining, using and/or copying this work, you (the licensee) agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms and conditions.

Permission to copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation, with or without modification, for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that you include the following on ALL copies of the software and documentation or portions thereof, including modifications:

The full text of this NOTICE in a location viewable to users of the redistributed or derivative work.

Any pre-existing intellectual property disclaimers, notices, or terms and conditions. If none exist, the should be included (hypertext is preferred, text is permitted) within the body of any redistributed or derivative code.

Notice of any changes or modifications to the files, including the date changes were made. (We recommend you provide URIs to the location from which the code is derived.)

THIS SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS," AND COPYRIGHT HOLDERS MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE OR DOCUMENTATION WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS.

COPYRIGHT HOLDERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY USE OF THE SOFTWARE OR DOCUMENTATION.

The name and trademarks of copyright holders may NOT be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to the software without specific, written prior permission. Title to copyright in this software and any associated documentation will at all times remain with copyright holders.

W3C® Short Software Notice

This section is a copy of the W3C® Short Software Notice and could be found at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-short-notice-20021231

Copyright © 2003 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © [$date-of-software] World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. This work is distributed under the W3C® Software License [1] in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231

Validation Ben Chang Oracle Joe Kesselman IBM (until September 2001) Rezaur Rahman Intel Corporation (until July 2001) Overview

This chapter describes the optional DOM Level 3 Validation feature. This module provides APIs to guide construction and editing of XML documents. Examples of such guided editing are queries of the nature that combine questions like "what does the grammar allow me to insert/delete here" and "if I insert/delete here, will the document still be valid."

Users may also want to know several levels of details, e.g., all the possible children, those which would be valid given what precedes this point, lists of defined symbols of a given type, in order to help in editing and creating a XML document. Some of these queries would prompt checks and warn you if you're about to conflict with or overwrite such data.

Finally, users would like to validate an edited or newly constructed document before serializing it or passing it to other users. To some, they may edit, come up with an invalid document, then edit again to result in a valid document. During this process, these APIs can allow the user to check the validity of the document or sub-tree on demand; and if needed can also require that the document or sub-tree remain valid during this editing process via the continuousValidityChecking flag.

A DOM application can use the hasFeature(feature, version) method of the DOMImplementation interface to determine with parameter values "VAL-DOC" and "3.0", respectively, whether or not these interfaces are supported by the implementation.

This chapter focuses on the editing aspects used in the XML document editing world and usage of such information.

Exceptions

This section describes the "VAL-DOC" exceptions.

The Validation operations may throw a ExceptionVAL as described in their descriptions.

unsigned short

An integer indicating the type of error generated.

If the DocumentEditVAL related to the node does not have any grammar and wfValidityCheckLevel is set to PARTIAL or STRICT_VALIDITY_CHECK.

Document Editing Interfaces

This section contains "Document Editing" methods as described in the DocumentEditVAL, NodeEditVAL, ElementEditVAL, and CharacterEditVAL interfaces.

This interface extends the NodeEditVAL interface with additional methods for document editing. An object implementing this interface must also implement the Document interface.

An attribute specifying whether continuous checking for the validity of the document is enforced or not. Setting this to true will result in an exception being thrown, i.e., VALIDATION_ERR, for documents that are invalid at the time of the call. When set to true, the implementation if free to raise the VALIDATION_ERR exception on DOM operations that would make the document invalid with respect to "partial validity." If the document is invalid, then this attribute will remain false. This attribute is false by default.

Returns list of all element node names belonging to the element's namespace. Given the names, nodes can be created from them; note that these are not nodes from the instance document, but rather are new nodes that could be inserted in the document.

namespaceURI of namespace. For DTDs, this is NULL.

List of all element node names belonging to the element's namespace.

Validates the document against the grammar. If the document is mutated during validation, a warning will be issued. In addition, the validation cannot modify the document, e.g., for default attributes. This method makes use of the passed-in error handler, as described in interface.

NO_GRAMMAR_AVAILABLE_ERR: Raised if an error occurs when the grammar is not available for the document.

This interface is similar to the Node interfaces, with methods for guided document editing.

An integer indicating which type of validation this is. Stricter validation for certain XML dialects can be done by extending the NodeEditVAL interface adding a new CheckTypeVAL constant(s).

Check for well-formedness of this node.

Check for namespace well-formedness includes WF_CHECK.

Checks for whether this node is partially valid. It includes NS_WF_CHECK.

Checks for strict validity of the node with respect to the grammar which by definition includes NS_WF_CHECK.

The default value specified in an attribute or an element declaration.

A DOMStringList of distinct values for an attribute or an element declaration.

Determines whether the Node.insertBefore operation would make this document not partially valid with respect to the grammar.

Node to be inserted.

Reference Node.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Has the same arguments as Node.removeChild. Determines whether the Node.removeChild operation would make this document not partially valid with respect to the grammar.

Node to be removed.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Has the same arguments as Node.replaceChild. Determines whether the Node.replaceChild operation would make this document not partially valid with respect to the grammar.

New Node.

Node to be replaced.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Has the same arguments as Node.appendChild. Determines whether the Node.replaceChild operation would make this document not partially valid with respect to the grammar.

Node to be appended.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Determines if the Node is valid relative to the grammar. It doesn't normalize before checking if the document is valid. To do so, one would need to explicitly call a normalize method.

Setting the deep flag on causes the isNodeValid method to check for the whole subtree of the current node for validity. Setting it to false only checks the current node and its immediate child nodes. The validateDocument method on the DocumentVAL interface, however, checks to determine whether the entire document is valid.

Flag to tell at what level validity and well-formedness checking is done.

true if the node is valid/well-formed in the grammar and check level defined by wfValidityCheckLevel, false if not.

NO_GRAMMAR_AVAILABLE_ERR: Exception is raised if the DocumentEditVAL related to this node does not have any grammar associated with it and wfValidityCheckLevel is set to PARTIAL or STRICT_VALIDITY_CHECK.

This interface extends the NodeEditVAL interface with additional methods for guided document editing. An object implementing this interface must also implement Element interface.

A NameList of possible Element nodes that can appear as children of this type of element. Note that if no context of this element exists, then this is NULL; it is an empty list if the element is not in the document tree. Given the names, nodes can be created from them; note that these are not nodes from the instance document, but rather are new nodes that could be inserted in the document.

A NameList of possible Element nodes that can appear as a parent of this type of element. Note that if no context of this element exists, for example, the parent element of this element, then this is NULL; it is an empty list if the element is not in the document tree. Given the names, nodes can be created from them; note that these are not nodes from the instance document, but rather are new nodes that could be inserted in the document.

A NameList of possible sibling Element nodes that can appear after this element.

A NameList of possible sibling Element nodes that can appear before this element.

A NameList of possible Attr nodes that can appear with this type of element. Given the names, nodes can be created from them; note that these are not nodes from the instance document, but rather are new nodes that could be inserted in the document.

A NameList of required Attr nodes that must appear with this type of element. Given the names, nodes can be created from them; note that these are not nodes from the instance document, but rather are new nodes that could be inserted in the document.

Determines element content type.

Constant for one of EMPTY_CONTENTTYPE - content type of an element which has neither child elements nor character data, ANY_CONTENTTYPE - content type of an element which can contain zero or more child elements as well as character data, MIXED_CONTENTTYPE - content type of an element which contains character data optionally interspersed with child elements, ELEMENTS_CONTENTTYPE - content type of an element which contains only child elements optionally separated by whitespace, SIMPLE_CONTENTTYPE - content type of an element which contains character data with attributes.

Determines if the value for specified attribute can be set.

Name of attribute.

Value to be assigned to the attribute.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Determines if an attribute node can be added with respect to the validity check level.

Node in which the attribute can possibly be set.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Determines if the attribute with given namespace and qualified name can be created if not already present in the attribute list of the element. If the attribute with the same qualified name and namespaceURI is already present in the element's attribute list, it tests whether the value of the attribute and its prefix can be set to the new value. See DOM core setAttributeNS.

namespaceURI of namespace.

Qualified name of attribute.

Value to be assigned to the attribute.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Verifies if an attribute by the given name can be removed.

Name of attribute.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Verifies if an attribute by the given local name and namespace can be removed.

The namespace URI of the attribute to remove.

Local name of the attribute to be removed.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Determines if an attribute node can be removed.

The Attr node to remove from the attribute list.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Determines if name is defined in the grammar.

Name of element.

A boolean that is true if the element is defined, false otherwise.

Determines if name in this namespace is defined in the current context.

namespaceURI of namespace.

Name of element.

A boolean that is true if the element is defined, false otherwise.

This interface extends the NodeEditVAL interface with additional methods for document editing. An object implementing this interface must also implement CharacterData interface.

true if content only whitespace; false for non-whitespace.

Determines if data can be set.

Argument to be set.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Determines if data can be appended.

Data to be appended.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Determines if data can be replaced.

Offset.

Replacement.

Argument to be set.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Determines if data can be inserted.

Offset.

Argument to be set.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

Determines if data can be deleted.

Offset.

Number of 16-bit units to delete.

true if no reason it can't be done; false if it can't be done.

 Range-related Document-Editing Interfaces

This section contains Range-related "Document-editing" methods.

This interface extends the Range interface with additional methods for guided document editing.

Determines if a passed-in node can be "surrounded" by two other nodes. For example, this convenience method can: 1) get all children of "x", 2) get all possible parents of "y", and then 3) check if the passed-in node "b" is present in both sets.

First node to "surround" passed-in node "b".

Second node to "surround" passed-in node "b".

Node to be "surrounded" by.

true if it is; false if it is not.

Returns a list of names of alternative elements, given a reference child as a parameter.

Reference child.

A list of names of alternative elements.

IDL Definitions

This appendix contains the complete OMG IDL for the Level 3 Document Object Model Validation definitions.

The IDL files are also available as: http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-DOM-Level-3-Val-20030205/idl.zip

 Java Language Binding

This appendix contains the complete Java bindings for the Level 3 Document Object Model Validation.

The Java files are also available as http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-DOM-Level-3-Val-20030205/java-binding.zip

 ECMAScript Language Binding

This appendix contains the complete ECMAScript binding for the Level 3 Document Object Model Validation definitions.

 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 former Chair), Ramesh Lekshmynarayanan (Merrill Lynch), Ray Whitmer (iMall, Excite@Home, and Netscape/AOL, Chair), 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!).

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.

Glossary 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.

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.

An ancestor node of any node A is any node above A in a tree model, where "above" means "toward the root."

An API is an Application Programming Interface, a set of functions or methods used to access some functionality.

The process by which an event can be handled by one of the target ancestors after being handled by the target node.

The process by which an event can be handled by one of the target ancestors before being handled by the target node.

A child is an immediate descendant node of a node.

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 is Microsoft's Component Object Model , a technology for building applications from binary software components.

The content model is a simple grammar governing the allowed types of the child elements and the order in which they appear. See Element Content in XML .

A context specifies an access pattern (or path): a set of interfaces which give you a way to interact with a model. For example, imagine a model with different colored arcs connecting data nodes. A context might be a sheet of colored acetate that is placed over the model allowing you a partial view of the total information in the model.

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.

A model for a document that represents the document after it has been manipulated in some way. For example, any combination of any of the following transformations would create a cooked model:

Expansion of internal text entities.

Expansion of external entities.

Model augmentation with style-specified generated text.

Execution of style-specified reordering.

Execution of scripts.

 A browser might only be able to provide access to a cooked model, while an editor might provide access to a cooked or the initial structure model (also known as the uncooked model) for a document.

CORBA is the Common Object Request Broker Architecture from the OMG . This architecture is a collection of objects and libraries that allow the creation of applications containing objects that make and receive requests and responses in a distributed environment.

A cursoris an object representation of a node. It may possess information about context and the path traversed to reach the node.

A data model is a collection of descriptions of data structures and their contained fields, together with the operations or functions that manipulate them.

When new releases of specifications are released, some older features may be marked as being deprecated. This means that new work should not use the features and that although they are supported in the current release, they may not be supported or available in future releases.

A descendant node of any node A is any node below A in a tree model, where "below" means "away from the root."

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 .

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.

The term "DOM Level 0" refers to a mix (not formally specified) of HTML document functionalities offered by Netscape Navigator version 3.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.0. In some cases, attributes or methods have been included for reasons of backward compatibility with "DOM Level 0".

The programming language defined by the ECMA-262 standard . As stated in the standard, the originating technology for ECMAScript was JavaScript . Note that in the ECMAScript binding, the word "property" is used in the same sense as the IDL term "attribute."

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 .

An event is the representation of some asynchronous occurrence (such as a mouse click on the presentation of the element, or the removal of child node from an element, or any of unthinkably many other possibilities) that gets associated with an event target.

The object to which an event is targeted.

Two nodes are equivalent if they have the same node type and same node name. Also, if the nodes contain data, that must be the same. Finally, if the nodes have attributes then collection of attribute names must be the same and the attributes corresponding by name must be equivalent as nodes.

Two nodes are deeply equivalent if they are equivalent, the child node lists are equivalent are equivalent as NodeList objects, and the pairs of equivalent attributes must in fact be deeply equivalent.

Two NodeList objects are equivalent if they have the same length, and the nodes corresponding by index are deeply equivalent.

Two NamedNodeMap objects are equivalent if they have the same length, they have same collection of names, and the nodes corresponding by name in the maps are deeply equivalent.

Two DocumentType nodes are equivalent if they are equivalent as nodes, have the same names, and have equivalent entities and attributes NamedNodeMap objects.

An information item is an abstract representation of some component of an XML document. See the for details.

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.

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.

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.

An Interface Definition Language (IDL) is used to define the interfaces for accessing and operating upon objects. Examples of IDLs are the Object Management Group's IDL , Microsoft's IDL , and Sun's Java IDL .

Companies, organizations, and individuals that claim to support the Document Object Model as an API for their products.

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.

Also known as the raw structure model or the uncooked model, this represents the document before it has been modified by entity expansions, generated text, style-specified reordering, or the execution of scripts. In some implementations, this might correspond to the "initial parse tree" for the document, if it ever exists. Note that a given implementation might not be able to provide access to the initial structure model for a document, though an editor probably would.

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.

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.

An object is live if any change to the underlying document structure is reflected in the object.

A local name is the local part of a qualified name. This is called the local part in Namespaces in XML .

A method is an operation or function that is associated with an object and is allowed to manipulate the object's data.

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.

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 .

A namespace URI is a URI that identifies an XML namespace. This is called the namespace name in Namespaces in XML .

A node is a namespace well-formed XML node if it is a well-formed node, and follow the productions and namespace constraints defined .

An object model is a collection of descriptions of classes or interfaces, together with their member data, member functions, and class-static operations.

A parent is an immediate ancestor node of a node.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

Two nodes are siblings if they have the same parent node.

When string matching is required, it is to occur as though the comparison was between 2 sequences of code points from .

A document is tag valid if all begin and end tags are properly balanced and nested.

The target node is the node representing the event target to which an event is targeted using the DOM event flow defined in .

The process by which an event can be handled by the event target.

An information item such as an XML Name which has been 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.

A document is type valid if it conforms to an explicit DTD.

See initial structure model.

A node is a well-formed XML node if it matches its respective production in , meets all well-formedness constraints related to the production, if the entities which are referenced within the node are also well-formed. See also the definition for well-formed XML documents in .

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.

See XML name in the XML specification ().

An XML namespace is a collection of names, identified by a URI reference , which are used in XML documents as element types and attribute names.

References

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

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. Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0, M. D¨rst, et al., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, April 2002. This version of the Character Model for the World Wide Web Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-charmod-20020430. The latest version of Character Model is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/charmod. The Microsoft Component Object Model, Microsoft Corporation. Available at http://www.microsoft.com/com. 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. Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 Specification, B. Bos, H. Wium Lie, C. Lilley, and I. Jacobs, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 12 May 1998. This version of the Cascading Style Sheets Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-CSS2-19980512. The latest version of Cascading Style Sheets is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2. 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. Document Object Model Level 3 Abstract Schemas Specification, B. Chang, E. Litani, J. Kesselman, R. Rahman, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, June 2002. This version of the DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-AS. The latest version of DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-AS. 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. Document Object Model Level 3 Core Specification, A. Le Hors, et al., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, October 2002. This version of the Document Object Model Level 3 Core Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20021022. The latest version of DOM Level 3 Core is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core. Document Object Model Level 2 Events Specification, T. Pixley, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, 13 November 2000. This version of the Document Object Model Level 2 Events Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Events-20001113. The latest version of Document Object Model Level 2 Events is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Events. Document Object Model Level 3 Events Specification, P. Le Hégaret, T. Pixley, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, July 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. Document Object Model Level 3 Load and Save Specification, J. Stenback, A. Heninger, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, July 2002. This version of the DOM Level 3 Load and Save Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-LS. The latest version of DOM Level 3 Load and Save is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-LS. Document Object Model Level 2 HTML Specification, J. Stenback, et al., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, October 2002. 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 Requirements for DOM Level 3 in DOM Requirements for DOM Level 3, B. Chang, et al., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, April 2001. This version of the DOM Requirements for DOM Level 3 is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Requirements-20010419/#Level3. The latest version of DOM Requirements is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Requirements. Document Object Model Level 2 Style Sheets and CSS Specification, C. Wilson, P. Le Hégaret, V. Apparao, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 13 November 2000. This version of the Document Object Model Level 2 Style Sheets and CSS Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Style-20001113. The latest version of Document Object Model Level 2 Style Sheets and CSS is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Style. Document Object Model Level 2 Traversal and Range Specification, J. Kesselman, J. Robie, M. Champion, P. Sharpe, V. Apparao, L. Wood, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 13 November 2000. This version of the Document Object Model Level 2 Traversal and Range Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Traversal-Range-20001113. The latest version of Document Object Model Level 2 Traversal and Range is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Traversal-Range. Document Object Model Level 3 Validation Specification, B. Chang, J. Kesselman, R. Rahman, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, October 2002. This version of the DOM Level 3 Validation Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Val. The latest version of DOM Level 3 Validation is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Val. Document Object Model Level 2 Views Specification, A. Le Hors, L. Cable, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 13 November 2000. This version of the Document Object Model Level 2 Views Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Views-20001113. The latest version of Document Object Model Level 2 Views is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Views. Document Object Model Level 3 XPath Specification, R. Whitmer, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, March 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. Developing International Software for Windows 95 and Windows NT: A Handbook for International Software Design, N. Kano, Author. Microsoft Press, 1995. ISBN 1-55615-840-8. ECMAScript Language Specification, Third Edition. European Computer Manufacturers Association, December 1999. This version of the ECMAScript Language is available from http://www.ecma.ch/. 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. 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). 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 Java IDL. Sun Microsystems. Available at http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/idl JavaScript Resources. Netscape Communications Corporation. Available at http://developer.netscape.com/tech/javascript/resources.html Java API for XML Processing (JAXP). Sun Microsystems. Available at http://java.sun.com/xml/xml_jaxp.html. JScript Resources. Microsoft. Available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/default.htm Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition Documentation, Version 1.4.1, Class java.awt.events.KeyEvent. Sun Microsystems. Available at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/docs/api/java/awt/event/KeyEvent.html. .NET Framework Class Library, Keys Enumeration. Microsoft. Available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemWindowsFormsKeysClassTopic.asp. 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/2001/REC-MathML2-20010221. The latest version of MathML 2.0 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2. MIDL Language Reference. Microsoft. Available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/midl/midl/midl_language_reference.asp. 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. 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. Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1, R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk, L. Masinter, P. Leach, T. Berners-Lee, Authors. Internet Engineering Task Force, June 1999. Available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt. XML Media Types, M. Murata, S. St.Laurent, D. Kohn, Editors. Internet Engineering Task Force, January 2001. Available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3023.txt. Simple API for XML, D. Megginson and D. Brownell, Maintainers. Available at http://www.saxproject.org/ 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/2001/REC-SVG-20010904. The latest version of SVG 1.0 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG. The Unicode Standard, Version 2.0.. The Unicode Consortium, 1996. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Developers Press. ISBN 0-201-48345-9. The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0.. The Unicode Consortium, 2000. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Developers Press. ISBN 0-201-61633-5. XHTML 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language, S. Pemberton, et al., Authors. World Wide Web Consortium, 26 January 2000, revised 1 August 2002. This version of the XHTML 1.0 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-xhtml1-20020801. The latest version of XHTML 1.0 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml10. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XHTML 1.1 - Module-base XHTML, May 2001. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xhtml11-20010531 W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XQuery 1.0 and XML Path 2.0 Data Model, June 2001. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/query-datamodel 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 1.1, J. Cowan, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, 15 October 2002. This version of the XML 1.1 Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-xml11-20021015. The latest version of XML 1.1 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11. XML Base, J. Marsh, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, June 2001. This version of the XML Base Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlbase-20010627. The latest version of XML Base is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase. 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 Events, S. McCarron, S. Pemberton, and T.V. Raman, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, October 2001. This version of the XML Events specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xml-events-20011026. The latest version of XML Events is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-events. 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. XML Schema Part 0: Primer, D. Fallside, Editor. World Wide Web Consortium, 2 May 2001. This version of the XML Part 0 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-0-20010502. The latest version of XML Schema Part 0 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0. XML Schema Part 1: Structures, H. Thompson, D. Beech, M. Maloney, and N. Mendelsohn, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 2 May 2001. This version of the XML Part 1 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-1-20010502. The latest version of XML Schema Part 1 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1. XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes, P. Byron and Ashok Malhotra, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 2 May 2001. This version of the XML Part 2 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-2-20010502. The latest version of XML Schema Part 2 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Associating Style Sheets with XML documents Version 1.0, June 1999. Available at http://www.w3.org/1999/06/REC-xml-stylesheet-19990629 XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0, J. Clark and S. DeRose, Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, 16 November 1999. This version of the XPath 1.0 Recommendation is http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xpath-19991116. The latest version of XPath 1.0 is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath. XPointer xpointer() Scheme, S. DeRose, E. Maler, and R. Daniel Jr., Editors. World Wide Web Consortium, July 2002. This version of the XPointer xpointer() Scheme Specification is http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xptr-xpointer-20020710. The latest version of XPointer xpointer() Scheme is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-xpointer. Index