This section defines a set of objects and
interfaces for accessing and manipulating document objects.
The functionality specified in this section (the
Core functionality) is sufficient to allow
software developers and web script authors to access and
manipulate parsed HTML and XML content inside conforming
products. The DOM Core API also allows creation and population
of a Document object using only DOM API calls; loading
a Document and saving it persistently is left
to the product that implements the DOM API.
The DOM presents documents as a hierarchy of Node
objects that also implement other, more specialized interfaces. Some
types of nodes may have child nodes of various types, and others are
leaf nodes that cannot have anything below them in the document
structure. For XML and HTML, the node types, and which node types they
may have as children, are as follows:
Document -- Element (maximum of
one), ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
DocumentType (maximum of one) DocumentFragment -- Element,
ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference DocumentType -- no childrenEntityReference -- Element,
ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference Element -- Element,
Text, Comment,
ProcessingInstruction, CDATASection,
EntityReferenceAttr -- Text,
EntityReferenceProcessingInstruction -- no childrenComment -- no childrenText -- no childrenCDATASection -- no childrenEntity -- Element,
ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
Text, CDATASection,
EntityReferenceNotation -- no childrenThe DOM also specifies a NodeList interface to handle
ordered lists of Nodes, such as the children of a
Node, or the elements returned by the
getElementsByTagName method of the Element
interface, and also a NamedNodeMap interface to handle
unordered sets of nodes referenced by their name attribute, such as the
attributes of an Element. NodeList and NamedNodeMap
objects in the DOM are live; that is,
changes to the underlying document structure are reflected in all
relevant NodeList and NamedNodeMap objects.
For example, if a DOM user gets a NodeList object
containing the children of an Element, then subsequently
adds more children to that element (or removes children, or modifies
them), those changes are automatically reflected in the
NodeList, without further action on the user's
part. Likewise, changes to a Node in the tree are
reflected in all references to that Node in
NodeList and NamedNodeMap
objects.
Finally, the interfaces Text, Comment, and
CDATASection all inherit from the
CharacterData interface.
Most of the APIs defined by this specification are
interfaces rather than classes. That means that
an implementation need only expose methods with
the defined names and specified operation, not
implement classes that correspond directly to the interfaces.
This allows the DOM APIs to be implemented as a thin veneer on top
of legacy applications with their own data structures, or
on top of newer applications with different class hierarchies.
This also means that ordinary constructors (in the Java or C++
sense) cannot be used to create DOM objects, since the
underlying objects to be constructed may have little relationship
to the DOM interfaces. The conventional solution to this in
object-oriented design is to define factory methods
that create instances of objects that implement the various
interfaces. In the DOM Level 1, objects implementing some
interface "X" are created by a "createX()" method on the
Document interface; this is because all DOM objects live
in the context of a specific Document.
The DOM Level 1 API does not define a standard
way to create DOMImplementation or Document
objects; DOM implementations must provide
some proprietary way of bootstrapping these DOM interfaces, and
then all other objects can be built from there.
The Core DOM APIs are designed to be compatible with a wide range of languages, including both general-user scripting languages and the more challenging languages used mostly by professional programmers. Thus, the DOM APIs need to operate across a variety of memory management philosophies, from language bindings that do not expose memory management to the user at all, through those (notably Java) that provide explicit constructors but provide an automatic garbage collection mechanism to automatically reclaim unused memory, to those (especially C/C++) that generally require the programmer to explicitly allocate object memory, track where it is used, and explicitly free it for re-use. To ensure a consistent API across these platforms, the DOM does not address memory management issues at all, but instead leaves these for the implementation. Neither of the explicit language bindings devised by the DOM Working Group (for ECMAScript and Java) require any memory management methods, but DOM bindings for other languages (especially C or C++) may require such support. These extensions will be the responsibility of those adapting the DOM API to a specific language, not the DOM Working Group.
While it would
be nice to have attribute and method names that are short,
informative, internally consistent, and familiar to users of
similar APIs, the names also should not clash with the names
in legacy APIs supported by DOM implementations.
Furthermore, both OMG IDL and ECMAScript have
significant limitations in their ability to disambiguate names
from different namespaces that make it difficult to avoid naming
conflicts with short, familiar names. So, some DOM names tend to be
long and quite descriptive in order to be unique across all
environments.
The Working Group has also attempted to be internally consistent in its use of various terms, even though these may not be common distinctions in other APIs. For example, we use the method name "remove" when the method changes the structural model, and the method name "delete" when the method gets rid of something inside the structure model. The thing that is deleted is not returned. The thing that is removed may be returned, when it makes sense to return it.
The DOM Core APIs present two somewhat different sets of
interfaces to an XML/HTML document; one presenting an "object
oriented" approach with a hierarchy of inheritance, and a
"simplified" view that allows all manipulation to be done via
the Node interface without requiring casts (in
Java and other C-like languages) or query interface calls in
COM environments. These operations are fairly expensive in Java and
COM, and the DOM may be used in performance-critical
environments, so we allow significant functionality using just the
Node interface. Because many other users will find the
inheritance hierarchy easier to understand than the
"everything is a Node" approach to the DOM, we also
support the full higher-level interfaces for those who prefer a more
object-oriented API.
In practice, this means that there is a certain amount of
redundancy in the API. The Working Group considers the
"inheritance" approach the primary view of the API, and the
full set of functionality on Node to be "extra"
functionality that users may employ, but that does not eliminate
the need for methods on other interfaces that an
object-oriented analysis would dictate. (Of course, when the
O-O analysis yields an attribute or method that is
identical to one on the Node interface, we don't
specify a completely redundant one.) Thus, even though there
is a generic nodeName attribute on the Node
interface, there is still a tagName attribute on the
Element interface; these two attributes must
contain the same value, but the Working Group considers it
worthwhile to support both, given the different constituencies
the DOM API must satisfy.
DOMString typeTo ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:
A DOMString is a sequence of 16-bit units.
typedef sequence<unsigned short> DOMString;
DOMString using UTF-16
(defined in [Unicode] and Amendment 1 of
[ISO/IEC 10646]).DOMString (a high surrogate and
a low surrogate).Note: Even though the DOM defines the name of the string type to
be DOMString, bindings may use different names. For
example for Java, DOMString is bound to the
String type because it also uses UTF-16 as its
encoding.
Note: As of August 1998, the OMG IDL specification included a
wstring type. However, that definition did not meet the
interoperability criteria of the DOM API since it relied on
negotiation to decide the width and encoding of a character.
The DOM has many interfaces that imply string matching. HTML
processors generally assume an uppercase (less often, lowercase)
normalization of names for such things as elements, while XML is
explicitly case sensitive. For the purposes of the DOM, string
matching is performed purely by binary comparison of the
16-bit units of the
DOMString. In addition, the DOM assumes that any
case normalizations take place in the processor, before
the DOM structures are built.
Note: Besides case folding, there are additional normalizations that can be applied to text. The W3C I18N Working Group is in the process of defining exactly which normalizations are necessary, and where they should be applied. The W3C I18N Working Group expects to require early normalization, which means that data read into the DOM is assumed to already be normalized. The DOM and applications built on top of it in this case only have to assure that text remains normalized when being changed. For further details, please see [Charmod].
The interfaces within this section are considered fundamental, and must be fully implemented by all conforming implementations of the DOM, including all HTML DOM implementations, unless otherwise specified.
DOM operations only raise exceptions in "exceptional"
circumstances, i.e., when an operation is impossible
to perform (either for logical reasons, because data is lost, or
because the implementation has become unstable). In general, DOM methods
return specific error values in ordinary
processing situations, such as out-of-bound errors when using
NodeList.
Implementations may raise other exceptions under other circumstances.
For example, implementations may raise an implementation-dependent
exception if a null argument is passed.
Some languages and object systems do not support the concept of exceptions. For such systems, error conditions may be indicated using native error reporting mechanisms. For some bindings, for example, methods may return error codes similar to those listed in the corresponding method descriptions.
exception DOMException {
unsigned short code;
};
// ExceptionCode
const unsigned short INDEX_SIZE_ERR = 1;
const unsigned short DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR = 2;
const unsigned short HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR = 3;
const unsigned short WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR = 4;
const unsigned short INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR = 5;
const unsigned short NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR = 6;
const unsigned short NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR = 7;
const unsigned short NOT_FOUND_ERR = 8;
const unsigned short NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR = 9;
const unsigned short INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR = 10;
An integer indicating the type of error generated.
Note: Other numeric codes are reserved for W3C for possible future use.
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERRHIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERRINDEX_SIZE_ERRINUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERRINVALID_CHARACTER_ERRNOT_FOUND_ERRNOT_SUPPORTED_ERRNO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERRNO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERRWRONG_DOCUMENT_ERRThe DOMImplementation interface provides a
number of methods for performing operations that are independent
of any particular instance of the document object model.
The DOM Level 1 does not specify a way of creating a document instance, and hence document creation is an operation specific to an implementation. Future Levels of the DOM specification are expected to provide methods for creating documents directly.
interface DOMImplementation {
boolean hasFeature(in DOMString feature,
in DOMString version);
};
hasFeaturefeature of type
DOMStringversion of type
DOMStringtrue.
|
|
DocumentFragment is a "lightweight" or
"minimal" Document object. It is very common to want to be able to
extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of
a document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or
rearranging a document by moving fragments around. It is
desirable to have an object which can hold such fragments and it
is quite natural to use a Node for this purpose. While it is
true that a Document object could fulfill this role,
a Document object can potentially be a heavyweight
object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is really
needed for this is a very lightweight object.
DocumentFragment is such an object.
Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as
children of another Node -- may take
DocumentFragment objects as arguments; this
results in all the child nodes of the DocumentFragment
being moved to the child list of this node.
The children of a DocumentFragment node are zero
or more nodes representing the tops of any sub-trees defining
the structure of the document. DocumentFragment nodes do not
need to be well-formed XML documents (although they do need to
follow the rules imposed upon well-formed XML parsed entities,
which can have multiple top nodes).
For example, a DocumentFragment might have only one child and
that child node could be a Text node. Such a structure model
represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML document.
When a DocumentFragment is inserted into a
Document (or indeed any other Node that may take children)
the children of the DocumentFragment and not the DocumentFragment
itself are inserted into the Node. This makes the DocumentFragment
very useful when the user wishes to create nodes that are siblings;
the DocumentFragment acts as the parent of these nodes so that the
user can use the standard methods from the Node
interface, such as insertBefore and
appendChild.
interface DocumentFragment : Node {
};
The Document interface represents the entire
HTML or XML document. Conceptually, it is the root of the
document tree, and provides the primary access to the
document's data.
Since elements, text nodes, comments, processing instructions,
etc. cannot exist outside the context of a
Document, the Document interface also
contains the factory methods needed to create these objects.
The Node objects created have a ownerDocument
attribute which associates them with the Document within whose
context they were created.
interface Document : Node {
readonly attribute DocumentType doctype;
readonly attribute DOMImplementation implementation;
readonly attribute Element documentElement;
Element createElement(in DOMString tagName)
raises(DOMException);
DocumentFragment createDocumentFragment();
Text createTextNode(in DOMString data);
Comment createComment(in DOMString data);
CDATASection createCDATASection(in DOMString data)
raises(DOMException);
ProcessingInstruction createProcessingInstruction(in DOMString target,
in DOMString data)
raises(DOMException);
Attr createAttribute(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
EntityReference createEntityReference(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
NodeList getElementsByTagName(in DOMString tagname);
};
doctype of type DocumentType, readonlyDocumentType)
associated with
this document. For HTML documents as well as XML documents without a
document type declaration this returns null. The DOM Level
1 does not support editing the Document Type Declaration.
docType cannot be altered in any way, including through
the use of methods inherited from the Node interface, such as
insertNode or removeNode.
documentElement of type Element, readonly
implementation of type DOMImplementation, readonlyDOMImplementation object that handles this
document. A DOM application may use objects from multiple
implementations.
createAttributecreateCDATASectionCDATASection node whose value is
the specified string.data of type
DOMStringCDATASection contents.|
The new |
|
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document. |
createCommentcreateDocumentFragmentDocumentFragment object.
|
A new |
createElementElement interface, so attributes can
be specified directly on the returned object.Attr nodes representing them are automatically created and
attached to the element.tagName of type
DOMStringtagName parameter may be provided in any case,
but it must be mapped to the canonical uppercase form by
the DOM implementation.
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character. |
createEntityReferenceEntityReference object. In addition, if
the referenced entity is known, the child list of the
EntityReference node is made the same as that of the
corresponding Entity node.name of type
DOMString|
The new |
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character. NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document. |
createProcessingInstructionProcessingInstruction node given
the specified name and data strings.|
The new |
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified target contains an illegal character. NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document. |
createTextNodegetElementsByTagNameThe Node interface is the primary datatype for the
entire Document Object Model. It represents a single node in the
document tree. While all objects implementing the
Node interface expose methods for dealing with
children, not all objects implementing the Node
interface may have children. For example, Text
nodes may not have children, and adding children to such nodes
results in a DOMException being raised.
The attributes nodeName, nodeValue
and attributes are
included as a mechanism to get at node information without
casting down to the specific derived interface. In cases where
there is no obvious mapping of these attributes for a specific
nodeType (e.g., nodeValue for an Element
or attributes
for a Comment), this returns null. Note that the
specialized interfaces may contain
additional and more convenient mechanisms to get and set the relevant
information.
interface Node {
// NodeType
const unsigned short ELEMENT_NODE = 1;
const unsigned short ATTRIBUTE_NODE = 2;
const unsigned short TEXT_NODE = 3;
const unsigned short CDATA_SECTION_NODE = 4;
const unsigned short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE = 5;
const unsigned short ENTITY_NODE = 6;
const unsigned short PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE = 7;
const unsigned short COMMENT_NODE = 8;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_NODE = 9;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE = 10;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE = 11;
const unsigned short NOTATION_NODE = 12;
readonly attribute DOMString nodeName;
attribute DOMString nodeValue;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
readonly attribute unsigned short nodeType;
readonly attribute Node parentNode;
readonly attribute NodeList childNodes;
readonly attribute Node firstChild;
readonly attribute Node lastChild;
readonly attribute Node previousSibling;
readonly attribute Node nextSibling;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap attributes;
readonly attribute Document ownerDocument;
Node insertBefore(in Node newChild,
in Node refChild)
raises(DOMException);
Node replaceChild(in Node newChild,
in Node oldChild)
raises(DOMException);
Node removeChild(in Node oldChild)
raises(DOMException);
Node appendChild(in Node newChild)
raises(DOMException);
boolean hasChildNodes();
Node cloneNode(in boolean deep)
raises(DOMException);
};
An integer indicating which type of node this is.
Note: Numeric codes up to 200 are reserved to W3C for possible future use.
ATTRIBUTE_NODEAttr.CDATA_SECTION_NODECDATASection.COMMENT_NODEComment.DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODEDocumentFragment.DOCUMENT_NODEDocument.DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODEDocumentType.ELEMENT_NODEElement.ENTITY_NODEEntity.ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODEEntityReference.NOTATION_NODENotation.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODEProcessingInstruction.TEXT_NODEText node.The values of nodeName, nodeValue,
and attributes vary according to the node type as follows:
| nodeName | nodeValue | attributes | |
| Attr | name of attribute | value of attribute | null |
| CDATASection | #cdata-section | content of the CDATA Section | null |
| Comment | #comment | content of the comment | null |
| Document | #document | null | null |
| DocumentFragment | #document-fragment | null | null |
| DocumentType | document type name | null | null |
| Element | tag name | null | NamedNodeMap |
| Entity | entity name | null | null |
| EntityReference | name of entity referenced | null | null |
| Notation | notation name | null | null |
| ProcessingInstruction | target | entire content excluding the target | null |
| Text | #text | content of the text node | null |
attributes of type NamedNodeMap, readonlyNamedNodeMap containing the
attributes of this node (if it is an Element) or
null otherwise.
childNodes of type NodeList, readonlyNodeList that contains all
children of this node. If there are no children, this is a
NodeList containing no nodes.
firstChild of type Node, readonlynull.
lastChild of type Node, readonlynull.
nextSibling of type Node, readonlynull.
nodeName of type DOMString, readonly
nodeType of type unsigned short, readonly
nodeValue of type DOMStringnull, setting it has no effect.
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly. |
|
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return more
characters than fit in a |
ownerDocument of type Document, readonlyDocument object associated with this node. This
is also the Document object used to create new nodes. When
this node is a Document, this is
null.
parentNode of type Node, readonlyAttr, Document,
DocumentFragment, Entity, and
Notation may have a parent. However, if a node has just
been created and not yet added to the tree, or if it has been removed
from the tree, this is null.
previousSibling of type Node, readonlynull.
appendChildnewChild to the end of the list of
children of this node. If the newChild is already in the
tree, it is first removed.newChild of type
NodeDocumentFragment
object, the entire contents of the document fragment are moved
into the child list of this node|
The node added. |
|
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is of a type
that does not allow children of the type of the WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
cloneNodeparentNode is null.).Element copies all attributes and their
values, including those generated by the XML processor to represent
defaulted attributes, but this method does not copy any text it
contains unless it is a deep clone, since the text is contained in a
child Text node. Cloning an Attribute
directly, as opposed to be cloned as part of an Element
cloning operation, returns a specified attribute
(specified is true). Cloning any other type
of node simply returns a copy of this node.EntityReference clone are
readonly. In addition, clones
of unspecified Attr nodes are specified. And, cloning
Document, DocumentType, Entity,
and Notation nodes is implementation dependent.deep of type
booleantrue, recursively clone the subtree under the
specified node; if false, clone only the node itself (and
its attributes, if it is an Element).
|
The duplicate node. |
|
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this node is a of type
|
hasChildNodes
|
|
insertBeforenewChild before the
existing child node refChild. If
refChild is null, insert
newChild at the end of the list of children.newChild is a DocumentFragment
object, all of its children are inserted, in the same order, before
refChild. If the newChild is already in the
tree, it is first removed.|
The node being inserted. |
|
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is of a type
that does not allow children of the type of the WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly or if the parent of the node being inserted is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if |
removeChildoldChild from
the list of children, and returns it.oldChild of type
Node|
The node removed. |
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if |
replaceChildoldChild with
newChild in the list of children, and returns the
oldChild node.newChild is a DocumentFragment object,
oldChild is replaced by all of the
DocumentFragment children, which are inserted in the
same order. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is
first removed.|
The node replaced. |
|
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is of a type
that does not allow children of the type of the WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node or the parent of the new node is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if |
The NodeList interface provides the abstraction of an
ordered collection of nodes, without defining or
constraining how this collection is implemented. NodeList
objects in the DOM are live.
The items in the NodeList are accessible via an
integral index, starting from 0.
interface NodeList {
Node item(in unsigned long index);
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
};
length of type unsigned long, readonlylength-1 inclusive.
itemindexth item in the collection.
If index is greater than or equal to the number
of nodes in the list, this returns null.index of type
unsigned long|
The node at the |
Objects implementing the NamedNodeMap interface are
used to represent collections of nodes that can be accessed by name. Note
that NamedNodeMap does not inherit from
NodeList; NamedNodeMaps are not maintained in
any particular order. Objects contained in an object implementing
NamedNodeMap may also be accessed by an ordinal index, but
this is simply to allow convenient enumeration of the contents of a
NamedNodeMap, and does not imply that the DOM specifies an
order to these Nodes.
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;
};
NamedNodeMap objects in the DOM are live.
length of type unsigned long, readonly0 to length-1 inclusive.
getNamedItemitemindexth item in the map.
If index is greater than or equal to the number
of nodes in this map, this returns null.index of type
unsigned long|
The node at the |
removeNamedItemname of type
DOMStringnodeName of the node to remove.|
The node removed from this map if a node with such a name exists. |
|
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if there is no node named
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly. |
setNamedItemnodeName attribute. If a node with
that name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new
one.nodeName attribute is used to
derive the name which the node must be stored under, multiple
nodes of certain types (those that have a "special" string
value) cannot be stored as the names would clash. This is seen
as preferable to allowing nodes to be aliased.arg of type
NodenodeName
attribute.|
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly. INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if |
The CharacterData interface extends Node with a set
of attributes and methods for accessing character data in the DOM. For
clarity this set is defined here rather than on each object that uses
these attributes and methods. No DOM objects correspond directly to
CharacterData, though Text and others do
inherit the interface from it. All offsets in this
interface start from 0.
As explained in the DOMString interface, text strings
in the DOM are represented in UTF-16, i.e. as a sequence of 16-bit
units. In the following, the term 16-bit units is used whenever
necessary to indicate that indexing on CharacterData is done in
16-bit units.
interface CharacterData : Node {
attribute DOMString data;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
DOMString substringData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count)
raises(DOMException);
void appendData(in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
void insertData(in unsigned long offset,
in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
void deleteData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count)
raises(DOMException);
void replaceData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count,
in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
};
data of type DOMStringCharacterData node. However, implementation limits may
mean that the entirety of a node's data may not fit into a single
DOMString. In such cases, the user may call
substringData to retrieve the data in appropriately sized
pieces.
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly. |
|
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return more
characters than fit in a |
length of type unsigned long, readonlydata and the
substringData method below. This may have the value zero,
i.e., CharacterData nodes may be empty.
appendDatadata provides access to the concatenation of
data and the DOMString specified.
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
deleteDatadata and length reflect the change.offset of type
unsigned longcount of type
unsigned longoffset and count exceeds
length then all 16-bit units from offset
to the end of the data are deleted.
|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
insertData
|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
replaceDataoffset of type
unsigned longcount of type
unsigned longoffset and count exceeds
length, then all 16-bit units to the end of the data
are replaced; (i.e., the effect is the same as a
remove method call with the same range, followed
by an append method invocation).arg of type
DOMStringDOMString with which the range must
be replaced.
|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
substringDataoffset of type
unsigned longcount of type
unsigned long|
The specified substring. If the sum of |
|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified range of text does
not fit into a |
The Attr interface represents an attribute in an Element object.
Typically the allowable values for the attribute are defined in a document
type definition.
Attr objects inherit the Node
interface, but since they are not actually child nodes of the element
they describe, the DOM does not consider them part of the document
tree. Thus, the Node attributes parentNode,
previousSibling, and nextSibling have a
null value for Attr objects. The DOM takes the
view that attributes are properties of elements rather than having a
separate identity from the elements they are associated with;
this should make it more efficient to implement
such features as default attributes associated with all elements of a
given type. Furthermore, Attr
nodes may not be immediate children of a DocumentFragment.
However, they can be associated with Element nodes contained within
a DocumentFragment.
In short, users and implementors of the DOM need to be aware that
Attr nodes have some things in
common with other objects inheriting the Node interface,
but they also are quite distinct.
The attribute's effective value is determined as follows: if this
attribute has been explicitly assigned any value, that value is the
attribute's effective value; otherwise, if there is a declaration for
this attribute, and that declaration includes a default value, then
that default value is the attribute's effective value; otherwise, the
attribute does not exist on this element in the structure model until
it has been explicitly added. Note that the nodeValue
attribute on the Attr instance can also be used to
retrieve the string version of the attribute's value(s).
In XML, where the value of an attribute can contain entity references,
the child nodes of the Attr node provide a representation in
which entity references are not expanded. These child nodes may be either
Text or EntityReference nodes. Because the
attribute type may be unknown, there are no tokenized attribute values.
interface Attr : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString name;
readonly attribute boolean specified;
// Modified in DOM Level 1:
attribute DOMString value;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
};
name of type DOMString, readonly
specified of type boolean, readonlytrue; 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).specified is true, and the value is the
assigned value.
specified is false,
and the value is the default value in the DTD.specified is true.
value of type DOMString, modified in DOM Level 1getAttribute on the
Element interface.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.
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly. |
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.
interface Element : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString tagName;
DOMString getAttribute(in DOMString name);
void setAttribute(in DOMString name,
in DOMString value)
raises(DOMException);
void removeAttribute(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
Attr getAttributeNode(in DOMString name);
Attr setAttributeNode(in Attr newAttr)
raises(DOMException);
Attr removeAttributeNode(in Attr oldAttr)
raises(DOMException);
NodeList getElementsByTagName(in DOMString name);
void normalize();
};
tagName of type DOMString, readonly
<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.
getAttributegetAttributeNodegetElementsByTagNameNodeList of all descendant Elements with a
given tag name, in the order in which they would be encountered in a
preorder traversal of the Element tree.name of type
DOMString|
A list of matching |
normalizeText nodes in the full depth of the
sub-tree underneath this Element, including attribute
nodes, into a "normal" form where only markup (e.g., tags, comments,
processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity references)
separates Text nodes, i.e., there are no adjacent
Text nodes. This can be used to ensure that the DOM view
of a document is the same as if it were saved and re-loaded, and is
useful when operations (such as XPointer [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.
removeAttributename of type
DOMString
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
removeAttributeNodeAttr has a default value it is immediately replaced.
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if |
setAttributeAttr node plus any Text and
EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and
use setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an
attribute.
|
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character. NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
setAttributeNode|
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if |
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 Element merges any such adjacent Text
objects into a single node for each block of text.
interface Text : CharacterData {
Text splitText(in unsigned long offset)
raises(DOMException);
};
splitTextoffset, keeping both in the tree as
siblings. This node then only contains all the content up to the
offset point. A new node of the same type, which is
inserted as the next sibling of this node, contains all the content at
and after the offset point. When the offset
is equal to the length of this node, the new node has
no data.offset of type
unsigned long0.|
The new node, of the same type as this node. |
|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset is negative or
greater than the number of 16-bit units in NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. |
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.
interface Comment : CharacterData {
};
The interfaces defined here form part of the DOM Level 1 Core specification, but objects that expose these interfaces will never be encountered in a DOM implementation that deals only with HTML. As such, HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to have objects that implement these interfaces.
A DOM application can use the hasFeature method of the
DOMImplementation interface to determine whether they
are supported or not. The feature string for all the interfaces listed in
this section is "XML" and the version is "1.0".
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 on the Element 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.
interface CDATASection : Text {
};
Each Document has a doctype attribute
whose value is either null or a DocumentType
object. The DocumentType interface in the DOM Level 1 Core
provides an interface to the list of entities that are defined
for the document, and little else because the effect of
namespaces and the various XML scheme efforts on DTD
representation are not clearly understood as of this writing.
The DOM Level 1 doesn't support editing DocumentType
nodes.
interface DocumentType : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString name;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap entities;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap notations;
};
entities of type NamedNodeMap, readonlyNamedNodeMap 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/>
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.entities cannot be altered in any way.
name of type DOMString, readonlyDOCTYPE keyword.
notations of type NamedNodeMap, readonlyNamedNodeMap containing the
notations declared in the DTD. Duplicates are discarded. Every node in
this map also implements the Notation interface.notations cannot be altered in any way.
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]), or is used for formal
declaration of
processing instruction targets (see
section 2.6 of the XML 1.0
specification [XML]). 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.
interface Notation : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
};
This interface represents an entity, either parsed or
unparsed, in an XML document. Note that this models the entity
itself not the entity declaration. Entity
declaration modeling has been left for a later Level of the DOM
specification.
The nodeName attribute that is inherited from
Node contains the name of the entity.
An XML processor may choose to completely expand entities before
the structure model is passed to the DOM; in this case there will
be no EntityReference nodes in the document tree.
XML does not mandate that a non-validating XML processor read
and process entity declarations made in the external subset or
declared in external parameter entities. This means
that parsed entities declared in the external subset
need not be expanded by some classes of applications, and that
the replacement value of the entity may not be available. When the
replacement value is available, the corresponding
Entity node's child list represents the structure of
that replacement text. Otherwise, the child list is empty.
The resolution of the children of the Entity (the
replacement value) may be lazily evaluated; actions by the user (such as
calling the childNodes method on the
Entity Node) are assumed to trigger the evaluation.
The DOM Level 1 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.
interface Entity : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
readonly attribute DOMString notationName;
};
notationName of type DOMString, readonlynull.
publicId of type DOMString, readonlynull.
systemId of type DOMString, readonlynull.
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 child list of the
EntityReference node is the same as that of the
Entity node.
As for Entity nodes, EntityReference nodes and
all their descendants are
readonly.
The resolution of the children of the EntityReference (the
replacement value of the referenced Entity) may be lazily
evaluated; actions by the user (such as calling the
childNodes method on the EntityReference node)
are assumed to trigger the evaluation.
interface EntityReference : Node {
};
The ProcessingInstruction interface
represents a "processing instruction", used in XML
as a way to keep processor-specific information in the text of the
document.
interface ProcessingInstruction : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString target;
attribute DOMString data;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
};
data of type DOMString?>.
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly. |
target of type DOMString, readonly