[W3C]
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification
Version 1.0
W3C Working Draft 14 January 2002
This version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20020114
( PostScript file , PDF file , plain text , ZIP file , single HTML
file)
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core
Previous version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20010913
Editors:
Arnaud Le Hors, IBM
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C, WG Chair
Gavin Nicol, Inso EPS (for DOM Level 1)
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad, Inc. (WG Chair emerata, for DOM Level 1 and 2)
Mike Champion, ArborText and Software AG (for DOM Level 1 from November
20, 1997)
Steve Byrne, JavaSoft (for DOM Level 1 until November 19, 1997)
Copyright ©2002 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability,
trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract
This specification defines the Document Object Model Core Level 3, a
platform- and language-neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to
dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of documents.
The Document Object Model Core Level 3 builds on the Document Object Model
Core Level 2 [DOM Level 2 Core].
Status of this document
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its
publication. Other documents may supersede this document. The latest status
of this document series is maintained at the W3C.
This document contains the Document Object Model Level 3 Core specification.
This is a Working Draft for review by W3C members and other interested
parties.
It is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other
documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as
reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress". This is
work in progress and does not imply endorsement by, or the consensus of,
either W3C or members of the DOM Working Group.
Comments on this document are invited and are to be sent to the public
mailing list www-dom@w3.org. An archive is available at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom/.
This document has been produced as part of the W3C DOM Activity. The authors
of this document are the DOM Working Group members.
A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be
found at http://www.w3.org/TR.
Table of contents
* Expanded Table of Contents
* Copyright Notice
* What is the Document Object Model?
* 1. Document Object Model Core
* Appendix A: Changes
* Appendix B: Namespaces Algorithms
* Appendix C: Accessing code point boundaries
* Appendix D: IDL Definitions
* Appendix E: Java Language Binding
* Appendix F: ECMAScript Language Binding
* Appendix G: Acknowledgements
* Glossary
* References
* Index
14 January 2002
Expanded Table of Contents
* Expanded Table of Contents
* Copyright Notice
o W3C Document Copyright Notice and License
o W3C Software Copyright Notice and License
* What is the Document Object Model?
o Introduction
o What the Document Object Model is
o What the Document Object Model is not
o Where the Document Object Model came from
o Entities and the DOM Core
o Conformance
o DOM Interfaces and DOM Implementations
* 1. Document Object Model Core
o 1.1. Overview of the DOM Core Interfaces
+ 1.1.1. The DOM Structure Model
+ 1.1.2. Memory Management
+ 1.1.3. Naming Conventions
+ 1.1.4. Inheritance vs. Flattened Views of the API
+ 1.1.5. The DOMString type
+ 1.1.6. The DOMTimeStamp type
+ 1.1.7. The DOMKeyObject type
+ 1.1.8. The DOMObject type
+ 1.1.9. String comparisons in the DOM
+ 1.1.10. XML Namespaces
+ 1.1.11. Mixed DOM implementations
+ 1.1.12. Bootstrapping
o 1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
o 1.3. Extended Interfaces
* Appendix A: Changes
o A.1. Changes between DOM Level 2 Core and DOM Level 3 Core
o A.2. Changes between DOM Level 1 Core and DOM Level 2 Core
+ A.2.1. Changes to DOM Level 1 Core interfaces and exceptions
+ A.2.2. New features
* Appendix B: Namespaces Algorithms
o B.1. Namespace normalization
o B.2. Namespace Prefix Lookup
o B.3. Namespace URI Lookup
* Appendix C: Accessing code point boundaries
o C.1. Introduction
o C.2. Methods
* Appendix D: IDL Definitions
* Appendix E: Java Language Binding
o E.1. Java Binding Extension
o E.2. Other Core interfaces
* Appendix F: ECMAScript Language Binding
o F.1. ECMAScript Binding Extension
o F.2. Other Core interfaces
* Appendix G: Acknowledgements
o G.1. Production Systems
* Glossary
* References
o 1. Normative references
o 2. Informative references
* Index
14 January 2002
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2002 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en
Automatique, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.
This document is published under the W3C Document Copyright Notice and
License. The bindings within this document are published under the W3C
Software Copyright Notice and License. The software license requires "Notice
of any changes or modifications to the W3C files, including the date changes
were made." Consequently, modified versions of the DOM bindings must
document that they do not conform to the W3C standard; in the case of the
IDL definitions, the pragma prefix can no longer be 'w3c.org'; in the case
of the Java language binding, the package names can no longer be in the
'org.w3c' package.
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Note: This section is a copy of the W3C Software Copyright Notice and
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14 January 2002
What is the Document Object Model?
Editors:
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc. (for DOM Level 2)
Jonathan Robie, Texcel (for DOM Level 1)
Introduction
The Document Object Model (DOM) is an application programming interface
(API) for valid HTML and well-formed XML documents. It defines the logical
structure of documents and the way a document is accessed and manipulated.
In the DOM specification, the term "document" is used in the broad sense -
increasingly, XML is being used as a way of representing many different
kinds of information that may be stored in diverse systems, and much of this
would traditionally be seen as data rather than as documents. Nevertheless,
XML presents this data as documents, and the DOM may be used to manage this
data.
With the Document Object Model, programmers can build documents, navigate
their structure, and add, modify, or delete elements and content. Anything
found in an HTML or XML document can be accessed, changed, deleted, or added
using the Document Object Model, with a few exceptions - in particular, the
DOM interfaces for the XML internal and external subsets have not yet been
specified.
As a W3C specification, one important objective for the Document Object
Model is to provide a standard programming interface that can be used in a
wide variety of environments and applications. The DOM is designed to be
used with any programming language. In order to provide a precise,
language-independent specification of the DOM interfaces, we have chosen to
define the specifications in Object Management Group (OMG) IDL [OMGIDL], as
defined in the CORBA 2.3.1 specification [CORBA]. In addition to the OMG IDL
specification, we provide language bindings for Java [Java] and ECMAScript
[ECMAScript] (an industry-standard scripting language based on JavaScript
[JavaScript] and JScript [JScript]).
Note: OMG IDL is used only as a language-independent and
implementation-neutral way to specify interfaces. Various other IDLs could
have been used ([COM], [Java IDL], [MIDL], ...). In general, IDLs are
designed for specific computing environments. The Document Object Model can
be implemented in any computing environment, and does not require the object
binding runtimes generally associated with such IDLs.
What the Document Object Model is
The DOM is a programming API for documents. It is based on an object
structure that closely resembles the structure of the documents it models.
For instance, consider this table, taken from an HTML document:
<TABLE>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD>Shady Grove</TD>
<TD>Aeolian</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD>Over the River, Charlie</TD>
<TD>Dorian</TD>
</TR>
</TBODY>
</TABLE>
A graphical representation of the DOM of the example table is:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[graphical representation of the DOM of the example table]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
graphical representation of the DOM of the example table
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the DOM, documents have a logical structure which is very much like a
tree; to be more precise, which is like a "forest" or "grove", which can
contain more than one tree. Each document contains zero or one doctype
nodes, one document element node, and zero or more comments or processing
instructions; the document element serves as the root of the element tree
for the document. However, the DOM does not specify that documents must be
implemented as a tree or a grove, nor does it specify how the relationships
among objects be implemented. The DOM is a logical model that may be
implemented in any convenient manner. In this specification, we use the term
structure model to describe the tree-like representation of a document. We
also use the term "tree" when referring to the arrangement of those
information items which can be reached by using "tree-walking" methods;
(this does not include attributes). One important property of DOM structure
models is structural isomorphism: if any two Document Object Model
implementations are used to create a representation of the same document,
they will create the same structure model, in accordance with the XML
Information Set [XML Information set].
Note: There may be some variations depending on the parser being used to
build the DOM. For instance, the DOM may not contain white spaces in element
content if the parser discards them.
The name "Document Object Model" was chosen because it is an "object model"
in the traditional object oriented design sense: documents are modeled using
objects, and the model encompasses not only the structure of a document, but
also the behavior of a document and the objects of which it is composed. In
other words, the nodes in the above diagram do not represent a data
structure, they represent objects, which have functions and identity. As an
object model, the DOM identifies:
* the interfaces and objects used to represent and manipulate a document
* the semantics of these interfaces and objects - including both behavior
and attributes
* the relationships and collaborations among these interfaces and objects
The structure of SGML documents has traditionally been represented by an
abstract data model, not by an object model. In an abstract data model, the
model is centered around the data. In object oriented programming languages,
the data itself is encapsulated in objects that hide the data, protecting it
from direct external manipulation. The functions associated with these
objects determine how the objects may be manipulated, and they are part of
the object model.
What the Document Object Model is not
This section is designed to give a more precise understanding of the DOM by
distinguishing it from other systems that may seem to be like it.
* The Document Object Model is not a binary specification. DOM programs
written in the same language binding will be source code compatible
across platforms, but the DOM does not define any form of binary
interoperability.
* The Document Object Model is not a way of persisting objects to XML or
HTML. Instead of specifying how objects may be represented in XML, the
DOM specifies how XML and HTML documents are represented as objects, so
that they may be used in object oriented programs.
* The Document Object Model is not a set of data structures; it is an
object model that specifies interfaces. Although this document contains
diagrams showing parent/child relationships, these are logical
relationships defined by the programming interfaces, not
representations of any particular internal data structures.
* The Document Object Model does not define what information in a
document is relevant or how information in a document is structured.
For XML, this is specified by the XML Information Set [XML Information
set]. The DOM is simply an API to this information set.
* The Document Object Model, despite its name, is not a competitor to the
Component Object Model [COM]. COM, like CORBA, is a language
independent way to specify interfaces and objects; the DOM is a set of
interfaces and objects designed for managing HTML and XML documents.
The DOM may be implemented using language-independent systems like COM
or CORBA; it may also be implemented using language-specific bindings
like the Java or ECMAScript bindings specified in this document.
Where the Document Object Model came from
The DOM originated as a specification to allow JavaScript scripts and Java
programs to be portable among Web browsers. "Dynamic HTML" was the immediate
ancestor of the Document Object Model, and it was originally thought of
largely in terms of browsers. However, when the DOM Working Group was formed
at W3C, it was also joined by vendors in other domains, including HTML or
XML editors and document repositories. Several of these vendors had worked
with SGML before XML was developed; as a result, the DOM has been influenced
by SGML Groves and the HyTime standard. Some of these vendors had also
developed their own object models for documents in order to provide an API
for SGML/XML editors or document repositories, and these object models have
also influenced the DOM.
Entities and the DOM Core
In the fundamental DOM interfaces, there are no objects representing
entities. Numeric character references, and references to the pre-defined
entities in HTML and XML, are replaced by the single character that makes up
the entity's replacement. For example, in:
<p>This is a dog & a cat</p>
the "&" will be replaced by the character "&", and the text in the P
element will form a single continuous sequence of characters. Since numeric
character references and pre-defined entities are not recognized as such in
CDATA sections, or in the SCRIPT and STYLE elements in HTML, they are not
replaced by the single character they appear to refer to. If the example
above were enclosed in a CDATA section, the "&" would not be replaced by
"&"; neither would the <p> be recognized as a start tag. The representation
of general entities, both internal and external, are defined within the
extended (XML) interfaces of Document Object Model Core.
Note: When a DOM representation of a document is serialized as XML or HTML
text, applications will need to check each character in text data to see if
it needs to be escaped using a numeric or pre-defined entity. Failing to do
so could result in invalid HTML or XML. Also, implementations should be
aware of the fact that serialization into a character encoding ("charset")
that does not fully cover ISO 10646 may fail if there are characters in
markup or CDATA sections that are not present in the encoding.
Conformance
This section explains the different levels of conformance to DOM Level 3.
DOM Level 3 consists of ? modules. It is possible to conform to DOM Level 3,
or to a DOM Level 3 module.
An implementation is DOM Level 3 conformant if it supports the Core module
defined in this document (see Fundamental Interfaces). An implementation
conforms to a DOM Level 3 module if it supports all the interfaces for that
module and the associated semantics.
Here is the complete list of DOM Level 3.0 modules and the features used by
them. Feature names are case-insensitive.
Core module
defines the feature "Core".
XML module
Defines the feature "XML".
Events module
defines the feature "Events" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
User interface Events module
defines the feature "UIEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
Mouse Events module
defines the feature "MouseEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
Text Events module
defines the feature "TextEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
Mutation Events module
defines the feature "MutationEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
HTML Events module
defines the feature "HTMLEvents" in [DOM Level 3 Events].
Load and Save module
defines the feature "LS" in [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and
Save].
Abstract Schemas Editing module
defines the feature "AS-EDIT" in [DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load
and Save].
XPath module
defines the feature "XPath" in [DOM Level 3 XPath].
A DOM implementation must not return true to the hasFeature(feature,
version) method of the DOMImplementation interface for that feature unless
the implementation conforms to that module. The version number for all
features used in DOM Level 3.0 is "3.0".
DOM Interfaces and DOM Implementations
The DOM specifies interfaces which may be used to manage XML or HTML
documents. It is important to realize that these interfaces are an
abstraction - much like "abstract base classes" in C++, they are a means of
specifying a way to access and manipulate an application's internal
representation of a document. Interfaces do not imply a particular concrete
implementation. Each DOM application is free to maintain documents in any
convenient representation, as long as the interfaces shown in this
specification are supported. Some DOM implementations will be existing
programs that use the DOM interfaces to access software written long before
the DOM specification existed. Therefore, the DOM is designed to avoid
implementation dependencies; in particular,
1. Attributes defined in the IDL do not imply concrete objects which must
have specific data members - in the language bindings, they are
translated to a pair of get()/set() functions, not to a data member.
Read-only attributes have only a get() function in the language
bindings.
2. DOM applications may provide additional interfaces and objects not
found in this specification and still be considered DOM conformant.
3. Because we specify interfaces and not the actual objects that are to be
created, the DOM cannot know what constructors to call for an
implementation. In general, DOM users call the createX() methods on the
Document class to create document structures, and DOM implementations
create their own internal representations of these structures in their
implementations of the createX() functions.
The Level 2 interfaces were extended to provide both Level 2 and Level 3
functionality.
DOM implementations in languages other than Java or ECMAScript may choose
bindings that are appropriate and natural for their language and run time
environment. For example, some systems may need to create a Document3 class
which inherits from a Document class and contains the new methods and
attributes.
DOM Level 3 does not specify multithreading mechanisms.
14 January 2002
1. Document Object Model Core
Editors:
Arnaud Le Hors, IBM
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C
Gavin Nicol, Inso EPS (for DOM Level 1)
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad, Inc. (for DOM Level 1)
Mike Champion, ArborText and Software AG (for DOM Level 1 from November
20, 1997)
Steve Byrne, JavaSoft (for DOM Level 1 until November 19, 1997)
Table of contents
* 1.1. Overview of the DOM Core Interfaces
o 1.1.1. The DOM Structure Model
o 1.1.2. Memory Management
o 1.1.3. Naming Conventions
o 1.1.4. Inheritance vs. Flattened Views of the API
o 1.1.5. The DOMString type
+ DOMString
o 1.1.6. The DOMTimeStamp type
+ DOMTimeStamp
o 1.1.7. The DOMKeyObject type
+ DOMKeyObject
o 1.1.8. The DOMObject type
+ DOMObject
o 1.1.9. String comparisons in the DOM
o 1.1.10. XML Namespaces
o 1.1.11. Mixed DOM implementations
o 1.1.12. Bootstrapping
* 1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
o DOMException, ExceptionCode, DOMImplementationSource,
DOMImplementation, DocumentFragment, Document, Node, NodeList,
NamedNodeMap, CharacterData, Attr, Element, Text, Comment,
UserDataHandler, DOMError, DOMErrorHandler, DOMLocator
* 1.3. Extended Interfaces
o CDATASection, DocumentType, Notation, Entity, EntityReference,
ProcessingInstruction
1.1. Overview of the DOM Core Interfaces
This section defines a set of objects and interfaces for accessing and
manipulating document objects. The functionality specified in this section
(the Core functionality) is sufficient to allow software developers and web
script authors to access and manipulate parsed HTML and XML content inside
conforming products. The DOM Core API also allows creation and population of
a Document object using only DOM API calls; loading a Document and saving it
persistently is left to the product that implements the DOM API.
1.1.1. The DOM Structure Model
The DOM presents documents as a hierarchy of Node objects that also
implement other, more specialized interfaces. Some types of nodes may have
child nodes of various types, and others are leaf nodes that cannot have
anything below them in the document structure. For XML and HTML, the node
types, and which node types they may have as children, are as follows:
* Document -- Element (maximum of one), ProcessingInstruction, Comment,
DocumentType (maximum of one)
* DocumentFragment -- Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text,
CDATASection, EntityReference
* DocumentType -- no children
* EntityReference -- Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text,
CDATASection, EntityReference
* Element -- Element, Text, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, CDATASection,
EntityReference
* Attr -- Text, EntityReference
* ProcessingInstruction -- no children
* Comment -- no children
* Text -- no children
* CDATASection -- no children
* Entity -- Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference
* Notation -- no children
The DOM also specifies a NodeList interface to handle ordered lists of
Nodes, such as the children of a Node, or the elements returned by the
getElementsByTagName method of the Element interface, and also a
NamedNodeMap interface to handle unordered sets of nodes referenced by their
name attribute, such as the attributes of an Element. NodeList and
NamedNodeMap objects in the DOM are live; that is, changes to the underlying
document structure are reflected in all relevant NodeList and NamedNodeMap
objects. For example, if a DOM user gets a NodeList object containing the
children of an Element, then subsequently adds more children to that element
(or removes children, or modifies them), those changes are automatically
reflected in the NodeList, without further action on the user's part.
Likewise, changes to a Node in the tree are reflected in all references to
that Node in NodeList and NamedNodeMap objects.
Finally, the interfaces Text, Comment, and CDATASection all inherit from the
CharacterData interface.
1.1.2. Memory Management
Most of the APIs defined by this specification are interfaces rather than
classes. That means that an implementation need only expose methods with the
defined names and specified operation, not implement classes that correspond
directly to the interfaces. This allows the DOM APIs to be implemented as a
thin veneer on top of legacy applications with their own data structures, or
on top of newer applications with different class hierarchies. This also
means that ordinary constructors (in the Java or C++ sense) cannot be used
to create DOM objects, since the underlying objects to be constructed may
have little relationship to the DOM interfaces. The conventional solution to
this in object-oriented design is to define factory methods that create
instances of objects that implement the various interfaces. Objects
implementing some interface "X" are created by a "createX()" method on the
Document interface; this is because all DOM objects live in the context of a
specific Document.
The Core DOM APIs are designed to be compatible with a wide range of
languages, including both general-user scripting languages and the more
challenging languages used mostly by professional programmers. Thus, the DOM
APIs need to operate across a variety of memory management philosophies,
from language bindings that do not expose memory management to the user at
all, through those (notably Java) that provide explicit constructors but
provide an automatic garbage collection mechanism to automatically reclaim
unused memory, to those (especially C/C++) that generally require the
programmer to explicitly allocate object memory, track where it is used, and
explicitly free it for re-use. To ensure a consistent API across these
platforms, the DOM does not address memory management issues at all, but
instead leaves these for the implementation. Neither of the explicit
language bindings defined by the DOM API (for ECMAScript and Java) require
any memory management methods, but DOM bindings for other languages
(especially C or C++) may require such support. These extensions will be the
responsibility of those adapting the DOM API to a specific language, not the
DOM Working Group.
1.1.3. Naming Conventions
While it would be nice to have attribute and method names that are short,
informative, internally consistent, and familiar to users of similar APIs,
the names also should not clash with the names in legacy APIs supported by
DOM implementations. Furthermore, both OMG IDL and ECMAScript have
significant limitations in their ability to disambiguate names from
different namespaces that make it difficult to avoid naming conflicts with
short, familiar names. So, DOM names tend to be long and descriptive in
order to be unique across all environments.
The Working Group has also attempted to be internally consistent in its use
of various terms, even though these may not be common distinctions in other
APIs. For example, the DOM API uses the method name "remove" when the method
changes the structural model, and the method name "delete" when the method
gets rid of something inside the structure model. The thing that is deleted
is not returned. The thing that is removed may be returned, when it makes
sense to return it.
1.1.4. Inheritance vs. Flattened Views of the API
The DOM Core APIs present two somewhat different sets of interfaces to an
XML/HTML document: one presenting an "object oriented" approach with a
hierarchy of inheritance, and a "simplified" view that allows all
manipulation to be done via the Node interface without requiring casts (in
Java and other C-like languages) or query interface calls in COM
environments. These operations are fairly expensive in Java and COM, and the
DOM may be used in performance-critical environments, so we allow
significant functionality using just the Node interface. Because many other
users will find the inheritance hierarchy easier to understand than the
"everything is a Node" approach to the DOM, we also support the full
higher-level interfaces for those who prefer a more object-oriented API.
In practice, this means that there is a certain amount of redundancy in the
API. The Working Group considers the "inheritance" approach the primary view
of the API, and the full set of functionality on Node to be "extra"
functionality that users may employ, but that does not eliminate the need
for methods on other interfaces that an object-oriented analysis would
dictate. (Of course, when the O-O analysis yields an attribute or method
that is identical to one on the Node interface, we don't specify a
completely redundant one.) Thus, even though there is a generic nodeName
attribute on the Node interface, there is still a tagName attribute on the
Element interface; these two attributes must contain the same value, but the
it is worthwhile to support both, given the different constituencies the DOM
API must satisfy.
1.1.5. The DOMString type
To ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:
Type Definition DOMString
A DOMString is a sequence of 16-bit units.
IDL Definition
valuetype DOMString sequence<unsigned short>;
Applications must encode DOMString using UTF-16 (defined in [Unicode 3.0]
and Amendment 1 of [ISO/IEC 10646]).
The UTF-16 encoding was chosen because of its widespread industry practice.
Note that for both HTML and XML, the document character set (and therefore
the notation of numeric character references) is based on UCS [ISO/IEC
10646]. A single numeric character reference in a source document may
therefore in some cases correspond to two 16-bit units in a DOMString (a
high surrogate and a low surrogate).
Note: Even though the DOM defines the name of the string type to be
DOMString, bindings may use different names. For example for Java, DOMString
is bound to the String type because it also uses UTF-16 as its encoding.
Note: As of August 2000, the OMG IDL specification ([OMGIDL]) included a
wstring type. However, that definition did not meet the interoperability
criteria of the DOM API since it relied on negotiation to decide the width
and encoding of a character.
1.1.6. The DOMTimeStamp type
To ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:
Type Definition DOMTimeStamp
A DOMTimeStamp represents a number of milliseconds.
IDL Definition
typedef unsigned long long DOMTimeStamp;
Note: Even though the DOM uses the type DOMTimeStamp, bindings may use
different types. For example for Java, DOMTimeStamp is bound to the long
type. In ECMAScript, TimeStamp is bound to the Date type because the range
of the integer type is too small.
1.1.7. The DOMKeyObject type
To ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:
Type Definition DOMKeyObject
A DOMKeyObject represents a reference to an application object.
IDL Definition
typedef Object DOMKeyObject;
Note: Even though the DOM uses the type DOMKeyObject, bindings may use
different types. For example, in Java DOMKeyObject is bound to the Object
type, while in ECMAScript DOMKeyObject is bound to any type.
Issue DOMKeyObject-1:
What does DOMKeyObject map to in ECMAScript?
Resolution: "any type"
1.1.8. The DOMObject type
To ensure interoperability, the DOM specifies the following:
Type Definition DOMObject
A DOMObject represents a reference to an application object.
IDL Definition
typedef Object DOMObject;
Note: Even though the DOM uses the type DOMObject, bindings may use
different types. For example, in Java and ECMAScript DOMObject is bound to
the Object type.
1.1.9. String comparisons in the DOM
The DOM has many interfaces that imply string matching. HTML processors
generally assume an uppercase (less often, lowercase) normalization of names
for such things as elements, while XML is explicitly case sensitive. For the
purposes of the DOM, string matching is performed purely by binary
comparison of the 16-bit units of the DOMString. In addition, the DOM
assumes that any case normalizations take place in the processor, before the
DOM structures are built.
The W3C Text normalization, as defined in [CharModel], is assumed to happen
at serialization time. The DOM Level 3 Load and Save module [DOM Level 3
Abstract Schemas and Load and Save] provides a serialization mechanism (see
the DOMWriter interface, section 2.3.1) and defines the
"ls-normalize-characters" to assure that text is serialized in the W3C Text
Normalization form. Other serialization mechanisms built on top of the DOM
Level 3 Core also have to assure that text is serialized in the W3C Text
Normalization form.
(ED: We need to review the case sensitivity of methods and attributes and
how it fits with XML and HTML. Current wording is not clear at all ... )
1.1.10. XML Namespaces
The DOM Level 2 (and higher) supports XML namespaces [XML Namespaces] by
augmenting several interfaces of the DOM Level 1 Core to allow creating and
manipulating elements and attributes associated to a namespace.
As far as the DOM is concerned, special attributes used for declaring XML
namespaces are still exposed and can be manipulated just like any other
attribute. However, nodes are permanently bound to namespace URIs as they
get created. Consequently, moving a node within a document, using the DOM,
in no case results in a change of its namespace prefix or namespace URI.
Similarly, creating a node with a namespace prefix and namespace URI, or
changing the namespace prefix of a node, does not result in any addition,
removal, or modification of any special attributes for declaring the
appropriate XML namespaces. Namespace validation is not enforced; the DOM
application is responsible. In particular, since the mapping between
prefixes and namespace URIs is not enforced, in general, the resulting
document cannot be serialized naively. For example, applications may have to
declare every namespace in use when serializing a document.
DOM Level 2 (and higher) doesn't perform any URI normalization or
canonicalization. The URIs given to the DOM are assumed to be valid (e.g.,
characters such as white spaces are properly escaped), and no lexical
checking is performed. Absolute URI references are treated as strings and
compared literally. How relative namespace URI references are treated is
undefined. To ensure interoperability only absolute namespace URI references
(i.e., URI references beginning with a scheme name and a colon) should be
used. Note that because the DOM does no lexical checking, the empty string
will be treated as a real namespace URI in DOM Level 2 methods. Applications
must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they
wish to have no namespace.
Note: In the DOM, all namespace declaration attributes are by definition
bound to the namespace URI: "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/". These are the
attributes whose namespace prefix or qualified name is "xmlns". Although, at
the time of writing, this is not part of the XML Namespaces specification
[XML Namespaces], it is planned to be incorporated in a future revision.
In a document with no namespaces, the child list of an EntityReference node
is always the same as that of the corresponding Entity. This is not true in
a document where an entity contains unbound namespace prefixes. In such a
case, the descendants of the corresponding EntityReference nodes may be
bound to different namespace URIs, depending on where the entity references
are. Also, because, in the DOM, nodes always remain bound to the same
namespace URI, moving such EntityReference nodes can lead to documents that
cannot be serialized. This is also true when the DOM Level 1 method
createEntityReference of the Document interface is used to create entity
references that correspond to such entities, since the descendants of the
returned EntityReference are unbound. The DOM Level 2 does not support any
mechanism to resolve namespace prefixes. For all of these reasons, use of
such entities and entity references should be avoided or used with extreme
care. A future Level of the DOM may include some additional support for
handling these.
The new methods, such as createElementNS and createAttributeNS of the
Document interface, are meant to be used by namespace aware applications.
Simple applications that do not use namespaces can use the DOM Level 1
methods, such as createElement and createAttribute. Elements and attributes
created in this way do not have any namespace prefix, namespace URI, or
local name.
Note: Given that the property [in-scope namespaces] defined in [XML
Information set] is not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core, the properties
[prefix] and [namespace name] defined by the Namespace Information Item in
[XML Information set] are not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core. However,
[DOM Level 3 XPath] does provide a way to access them.
Note: DOM Level 1 methods are namespace ignorant. Therefore, while it is
safe to use these methods when not dealing with namespaces, using them and
the new ones at the same time should be avoided. DOM Level 1 methods solely
identify attribute nodes by their nodeName. On the contrary, the DOM Level 2
methods related to namespaces, identify attribute nodes by their
namespaceURI and localName. Because of this fundamental difference, mixing
both sets of methods can lead to unpredictable results. In particular, using
setAttributeNS, an element may have two attributes (or more) that have the
same nodeName, but different namespaceURIs. Calling getAttribute with that
nodeName could then return any of those attributes. The result depends on
the implementation. Similarly, using setAttributeNode, one can set two
attributes (or more) that have different nodeNames but the same prefix and
namespaceURI. In this case getAttributeNodeNS will return either attribute,
in an implementation dependent manner. The only guarantee in such cases is
that all methods that access a named item by its nodeName will access the
same item, and all methods which access a node by its URI and local name
will access the same node. For instance, setAttribute and setAttributeNS
affect the node that getAttribute and getAttributeNS, respectively, return.
1.1.11. Mixed DOM implementations
As new XML vocabularies are developed, those defining the vocabularies are
also beginning to define specialized APIs for manipulating XML instances of
those vocabularies. This is usually done by extending the DOM to provide
interfaces and methods that perform operations frequently needed their
users. For example, the MathML [MathML 2.0] and SVG [SVG 1.0] specifications
are developing DOM extensions to allow users to manipulate instances of
these vocabularies using semantics appropriate to images and mathematics
(respectively) as well as the generic DOM XML semantics. Instances of SVG or
MathML are often embedded in XML documents conforming to a different schema
such as XHTML.
While the XML Namespaces Recommendation provides a mechanism for integrating
these documents at the syntax level, it has become clear that the DOM Level
2 Recommendation [DOM Level 2 Core] is not rich enough to cover all the
issues that have been encountered in having these different DOM
implementations be used together in a single application. DOM Level 3 deals
with the requirements brought about by embedding fragments written according
to a specific markup language (the embedded component) in a document where
the rest of the markup is not written according to that specific markup
language (the host document). It does not deal with fragments embedded by
reference or linking.
A DOM implementation supporting DOM Level 3 Core should be able to
collaborate with subcomponents implementing specific DOMs to assemble a
compound document that can be traversed and manipulated via DOM interfaces
as if it were a seamless whole.
The normal typecast operation on an object should support the interfaces
expected by legacy code for a given document type. Typecasting techniques
may not be adequate for selecting between multiple DOM specializations of an
object which were combined at run time, because they may not all be part of
the same object as defined by the binding's object model. Conflicts are most
obvious with the Document object, since it is shared as owner by the rest of
the document. In a homogeneous document, elements rely on the Document for
specialized services and construction of specialized nodes. In a
heterogeneous document, elements from different modules expect different
services and APIs from the same Document object, since there can only be one
owner and root of the document hierarchy.
1.1.12. Bootstrapping
Because previous versions of the DOM specification only defined a set of
interfaces, applications had to rely on some implementation dependent code
to start from. However, hard-coding the application to a specific
implementation prevents the application from running on other
implementations and from using the most-suitable implementation of the
environment. At the same time, implementations may also need to load modules
or perform other setup to efficiently adapt to different and sometimes
mutually-exclusive feature sets.
To solve these problems this specification introduces a
DOMImplementationRegistry object with a function that lets an application
find an implementation, based on the specific features it requires. How this
object is found and what it exactly looks like is not defined here, because
this cannot be done in a language-independent manner. Instead, each language
binding defines its own way of doing this. See Java Language Binding and
ECMAScript Language Binding for specifics.
In all cases, though, the DOMImplementationRegistry provides a
getDOMImplementation method accepting a features string, which is passed to
every known DOMImplementationSource until a suitable DOMImplementation is
found and returned. This method is the same as the one found on the
DOMImplementationSource interface defined below.
Any number of DOMImplementationSource objects can be registered. A source
may return one or more DOMImplementation singletons or construct new
DOMImplementation objects, depending upon whether the requested features
require specialized state in the DOMImplementation object.
Issue Level-3-Bootstrap-1:
Is this not generic enough?
Resolution: Yes. (F2F 31 Jul 2001)
Issue Level-3-Bootstrap-2:
Should the method getDOMImplementation be called byFeature instead?
Resolution: No. (F2F 31 Jul 2001)
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
The interfaces within this section are considered fundamental, and must be
fully implemented by all conforming implementations of the DOM, including
all HTML DOM implementations [DOM Level 1], unless otherwise specified.
(ED: change link to DOM Level 2 HTML when available)
A DOM application may use the hasFeature(feature, version) method of the
DOMImplementation interface with parameter values "Core" and "3.0"
(respectively) to determine whether or not this module is supported by the
implementation. Any implementation that conforms to DOM Level 3 or a DOM
Level 3 module must conform to the Core module. Please refer to additional
information about conformance in this specification. The DOM Level 3 Core
module is backward compatible with the DOM Level 2 Core [DOM Level 2 Core]
module, i.e. a DOM Level 3 Core implementation who returns true for "Core"
with the version number "3.0" must also return true for this feature when
the version number is "2.0", "" or, null.
Exception DOMException
DOM operations only raise exceptions in "exceptional" circumstances,
i.e., when an operation is impossible to perform (either for logical
reasons, because data is lost, or because the implementation has become
unstable). In general, DOM methods return specific error values in
ordinary processing situations, such as out-of-bound errors when using
NodeList.
Implementations should raise other exceptions under other
circumstances. For example, implementations should raise an
implementation-dependent exception if a null argument is passed when
null was not expected.
Some languages and object systems do not support the concept of
exceptions. For such systems, error conditions may be indicated using
native error reporting mechanisms. For some bindings, for example,
methods may return error codes similar to those listed in the
corresponding method descriptions.
IDL Definition
exception DOMException {
unsigned short code;
};
// ExceptionCode
const unsigned short INDEX_SIZE_ERR = 1;
const unsigned short DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR = 2;
const unsigned short HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR = 3;
const unsigned short WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR = 4;
const unsigned short INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR = 5;
const unsigned short NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR = 6;
const unsigned short NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR = 7;
const unsigned short NOT_FOUND_ERR = 8;
const unsigned short NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR = 9;
const unsigned short INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR = 10;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short INVALID_STATE_ERR = 11;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short SYNTAX_ERR = 12;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR = 13;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short NAMESPACE_ERR = 14;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short INVALID_ACCESS_ERR = 15;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
const unsigned short VALIDATION_ERR = 16;
Definition group ExceptionCode
An integer indicating the type of error generated.
Note: Other numeric codes are reserved for W3C for possible future
use.
Defined Constants
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR
If the specified range of text does not fit into a
DOMString
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR
If any node is inserted somewhere it doesn't belong
INDEX_SIZE_ERR
If index or size is negative, or greater than the
allowed value
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR
If an attempt is made to add an attribute that is
already in use elsewhere
INVALID_ACCESS_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
If a parameter or an operation is not supported by the
underlying object.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
If an invalid or illegal character is specified, such as
in a name. See production 2 in the XML specification for
the definition of a legal character, and production 5
for the definition of a legal name character.
INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
If an attempt is made to modify the type of the
underlying object.
INVALID_STATE_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
If an attempt is made to use an object that is not, or
is no longer, usable.
NAMESPACE_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
If an attempt is made to create or change an object in a
way which is incorrect with regard to namespaces.
NOT_FOUND_ERR
If an attempt is made to reference a node in a context
where it does not exist
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR
If the implementation does not support the requested
type of object or operation.
NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR
If data is specified for a node which does not support
data
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
If an attempt is made to modify an object where
modifications are not allowed
SYNTAX_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
If an invalid or illegal string is specified.
VALIDATION_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 3.
If a call to a method such as insertBefore or
removeChild would make the Node invalid with respect to
"partial validity", this exception would be raised and
the operation would not be done. This code is used in
[DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save]. Refer
to this specification for further information.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
If a node is used in a different document than the one
that created it (that doesn't support it)
Interface DOMImplementationSource
This interface permits a DOM implementer to supply one or more
implementations, based upon requested features. Each implemented
DOMImplementationSource object is listed in the binding-specific list
of available sources so that its DOMImplementation objects are made
available.
IDL Definition
interface DOMImplementationSource {
DOMImplementation getDOMImplementation(in DOMString features);
};
Methods
getDOMImplementation
A method to request a DOM implementation.
Parameters
features of type DOMString
A string that specifies which features are required.
This is a space separated list in which each feature is
specified by its name optionally followed by a space and
a version number. This is something like: "XML 1.0
Traversal Events 2.0"
Return Value
DOMImplementation An implementation that has the desired
features, or null if this source has none.
No Exceptions
Interface DOMImplementation
The DOMImplementation interface provides a number of methods for
performing operations that are independent of any particular instance
of the document object model.
IDL Definition
interface DOMImplementation {
boolean hasFeature(in DOMString feature,
in DOMString version);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
DocumentType createDocumentType(in DOMString qualifiedName,
in DOMString publicId,
in DOMString systemId)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Document createDocument(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName,
in DocumentType doctype)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMImplementation getInterface(in DOMString feature);
};
Methods
createDocument introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates a DOM Document object of the specified type with its
document element.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the document element to create or
null.
qualifiedName of type DOMString
The qualified name of the document element to be created
or null.
doctype of type DocumentType
The type of document to be created or null.
When doctype is not null, its Node.ownerDocument
attribute is set to the document being created.
Return Value
Document A new Document object with its document element. If
the NamespaceURI, qualifiedName, and doctype are
null, the returned Document is empty with no
document element.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
qualified name contains an illegal character.
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is
malformed, if the qualifiedName has a prefix
and the namespaceURI is null, or if the
qualifiedName is null and the namespaceURI is
different from null, or if the qualifiedName
has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI
is different from
"http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" [XML
Namespaces], or if the DOM implementation does
not support the "XML" feature but a non-null
namespace URI was provided, since namespaces
were defined by XML.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if doctype has
already been used with a different document or
was created from a different implementation.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised by DOM
implementations which do not support the "XML"
feature, if they choose not to support this
method.
Note: Other features introduced in the future,
by the DOM WG or in extensions defined by other
groups, may also demand support for this
method; please consult the definition of the
feature to see if it requires this method.
createDocumentType introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates an empty DocumentType node. Entity declarations and
notations are not made available. Entity reference expansions
and default attribute additions do not occur. It is expected
that a future version of the DOM will provide a way for
populating a DocumentType.
Parameters
qualifiedName of type DOMString
The qualified name of the document type to be created.
publicId of type DOMString
The external subset public identifier.
systemId of type DOMString
The external subset system identifier.
Return Value
DocumentType A new DocumentType node with Node.ownerDocument
set to null.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
qualified name contains an illegal character.
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is
malformed.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised by DOM
implementations which do not support the "XML"
feature, if they choose not to support this
method.
Note: Other features introduced in the future,
by the DOM WG or in extensions defined by other
groups, may also demand support for this
method; please consult the definition of the
feature to see if it requires this method.
getInterface introduced in DOM Level 3
This method makes available a DOMImplementation's specialized
interface (see Mixed DOM implementations).
Parameters
feature of type DOMString
The name of the feature requested (case-insensitive).
Return Value
DOMImplementation Returns an alternate DOMImplementation
which implements the specialized APIs of
the specified feature, if any, or null if
there is no alternate DOMImplementation
object which implements interfaces
associated with that feature. Any
alternate DOMImplementation returned by
this method must delegate to the primary
core DOMImplementation and not return
results inconsistent with the primary
DOMImplementation
No Exceptions
hasFeature
Test if the DOM implementation implements a specific feature.
Parameters
feature of type DOMString
The name of the feature to test (case-insensitive). The
values used by DOM features are defined throughout the
DOM Level 3 specifications and listed in the Conformance
section. The name must be an XML name. To avoid possible
conflicts, as a convention, names referring to features
defined outside the DOM specification should be made
unique.
version of type DOMString
This is the version number of the feature to test. In
Level 3, the string can be either "3.0", "2.0" or "1.0".
If the version is null or empty string, supporting any
version of the feature causes the method to return true.
Return Value
boolean true if the feature is implemented in the specified
version, false otherwise.
No Exceptions
Interface DocumentFragment
DocumentFragment is a "lightweight" or "minimal" Document object. It is
very common to want to be able to extract a portion of a document's
tree or to create a new fragment of a document. Imagine implementing a
user command like cut or rearranging a document by moving fragments
around. It is desirable to have an object which can hold such fragments
and it is quite natural to use a Node for this purpose. While it is
true that a Document object could fulfill this role, a Document object
can potentially be a heavyweight object, depending on the underlying
implementation. What is really needed for this is a very lightweight
object. DocumentFragment is such an object.
Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children
of another Node -- may take DocumentFragment objects as arguments; this
results in all the child nodes of the DocumentFragment being moved to
the child list of this node.
The children of a DocumentFragment node are zero or more nodes
representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of the
document. DocumentFragment nodes do not need to be well-formed XML
documents (although they do need to follow the rules imposed upon
well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top nodes).
For example, a DocumentFragment might have only one child and that
child node could be a Text node. Such a structure model represents
neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML document.
When a DocumentFragment is inserted into a Document (or indeed any
other Node that may take children) the children of the DocumentFragment
and not the DocumentFragment itself are inserted into the Node. This
makes the DocumentFragment very useful when the user wishes to create
nodes that are siblings; the DocumentFragment acts as the parent of
these nodes so that the user can use the standard methods from the Node
interface, such as insertBefore and appendChild.
Note: The properties [notations] and [unparsed entities] defined by the
Document Information Item in [XML Information set] are accessible
through the DocumentType interface. The property [all declarations
processed] is not accessible through the DOM API.
IDL Definition
interface DocumentFragment : Node {
};
Interface Document
The Document interface represents the entire HTML or XML document.
Conceptually, it is the root of the document tree, and provides the
primary access to the document's data.
Since elements, text nodes, comments, processing instructions, etc.
cannot exist outside the context of a Document, the Document interface
also contains the factory methods needed to create these objects. The
Node objects created have a ownerDocument attribute which associates
them with the Document within whose context they were created.
IDL Definition
interface Document : Node {
// Modified in DOM Level 3:
readonly attribute DocumentType doctype;
readonly attribute DOMImplementation implementation;
readonly attribute Element documentElement;
Element createElement(in DOMString tagName)
raises(DOMException);
DocumentFragment createDocumentFragment();
Text createTextNode(in DOMString data);
Comment createComment(in DOMString data);
CDATASection createCDATASection(in DOMString data)
raises(DOMException);
ProcessingInstruction createProcessingInstruction(in DOMString target,
in DOMString data)
raises(DOMException);
Attr createAttribute(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
EntityReference createEntityReference(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
NodeList getElementsByTagName(in DOMString tagname);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node importNode(in Node importedNode,
in boolean deep)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Element createElementNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Attr createAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Element getElementById(in DOMString elementId);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString actualEncoding;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString encoding;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute boolean standalone;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString version;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute boolean strictErrorChecking;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMErrorHandler errorHandler;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString documentURI;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
Node adoptNode(in Node source)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
void normalizeDocument();
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
boolean canSetNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name,
in boolean state);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
void setNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name,
in boolean state)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
boolean getNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
Node renameNode(in Node n,
in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
};
Attributes
actualEncoding of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying the actual encoding of this document.
This is null otherwise.
This attribute represents the property [character encoding
scheme] defined in [XML Information set].
doctype of type DocumentType, readonly, modified in DOM Level 3
The Document Type Declaration (see DocumentType) associated
with this document. For HTML documents as well as XML
documents without a document type declaration this returns
null. The DOM Level 2 does not support editing the Document
Type Declaration.
documentElement of type Element, readonly
This is a convenience attribute that allows direct access to
the child node that is the document element of the document.
This attribute represents the property [document element]
defined in [XML Information set].
documentURI of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
The location of the document or null if undefined.
Beware that when the Document supports the feature "HTML"
[DOM Level 2 HTML], the href attribute of the HTML BASE
element takes precedence over this attribute.
encoding of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying, as part of the XML declaration, the
encoding of this document. This is null when unspecified.
errorHandler of type DOMErrorHandler, introduced in DOM Level 3
This attribute allows applications to specify a
DOMErrorHandler to be called in the event that an error is
encountered while performing an operation on a document. Note
that not all methods use this mechanism, see the description
of each method for details.
implementation of type DOMImplementation, readonly
The DOMImplementation object that handles this document. A
DOM application may use objects from multiple
implementations.
standalone of type boolean, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying, as part of the XML declaration,
whether this document is standalone.
This attribute represents the property [standalone] defined
in [XML Information set].
strictErrorChecking of type boolean, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying whether errors checking is enforced
or not. When set to false, the implementation is free to not
test every possible error case normally defined on DOM
operations, and not raise any DOMException. In case of error,
the behavior is undefined. This attribute is true by
defaults.
version of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying, as part of the XML declaration, the
version number of this document. This is null when
unspecified.
This attribute represents the property [version] defined in
[XML Information set].
Exceptions on setting
DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the version is set
to a value that is not supported by this
Document.
Methods
adoptNode introduced in DOM Level 3
Changes the ownerDocument of a node, its children, as well as
the attached attribute nodes if there are any. If the node
has a parent it is first removed from its parent child list.
This effectively allows moving a subtree from one document to
another. The following list describes the specifics for each
type of node.
ATTRIBUTE_NODE
The ownerElement attribute is set to null and the
specified flag is set to true on the adopted Attr. The
descendants of the source Attr are recursively adopted.
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
The descendants of the source node are recursively
adopted.
DOCUMENT_NODE
Document nodes cannot be adopted.
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
DocumentType nodes cannot be adopted.
ELEMENT_NODE
Specified attribute nodes of the source element are
adopted, and the generated Attr nodes. Default
attributes are discarded, though if the document being
adopted into defines default attributes for this element
name, those are assigned. The descendants of the source
element are recursively adopted.
ENTITY_NODE
Entity nodes cannot be adopted.
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
Only the EntityReference node itself is adopted, the
descendants are discarded, since the source and
destination documents might have defined the entity
differently. If the document being imported into
provides a definition for this entity name, its value is
assigned.
NOTATION_NODE
Notation nodes cannot be adopted.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE, TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE,
COMMENT_NODE
These nodes can all be adopted. No specifics.
Issue adoptNode-1:
Should this method simply return null when it fails? How
"exceptional" is failure for this method?
Resolution: Stick with raising exceptions only in
exceptional circumstances, return null on failure (F2F
19 Jun 2000).
Issue adoptNode-2:
Can an entity node really be adopted?
Resolution: No, neither can Notation nodes (Telcon 13
Dec 2000).
Issue adoptNode-3:
Does this affect keys and hashCode's of the adopted
subtree nodes?
If so, what about readonly-ness of key and hashCode?
if not, would appendChild affect keys/hashCodes or would
it generate exceptions if key's are duplicate?
Resolution: Both keys and hashcodes have been dropped.
Parameters
source of type Node
The node to move into this document.
Return Value
Node The adopted node, or null if this operation fails, such
as when the source node comes from a different
implementation.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the source node is
of type DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT_TYPE.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the
source node is readonly.
canSetNormalizationFeature introduced in DOM Level 3
Query whether setting a feature to a specific value is
supported.
The feature name has the same form as a DOM hasFeature
string.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the feature to check.
state of type boolean
The requested state of the feature (true or false).
Return Value
boolean true if the feature could be successfully set to the
specified value, or false if the feature is not
recognized or the requested value is not supported.
This does not change the current value of the
feature itself.
No Exceptions
createAttribute
Creates an Attr of the given name. Note that the Attr
instance can then be set on an Element using the
setAttributeNode method.
To create an attribute with a qualified name and namespace
URI, use the createAttributeNS method.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the attribute.
Return Value
Attr A new Attr object with the nodeName attribute set to
name, and localName, prefix, and namespaceURI set to
null. The value of the attribute is the empty string.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an illegal character.
createAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates an attribute of the given qualified name and
namespace URI.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to create.
qualifiedName of type DOMString
The qualified name of the attribute to instantiate.
Return Value
Attr A new Attr object with the following attributes:
Attribute Value
Node.nodeName qualifiedName
Node.namespaceURInamespaceURI
Node.prefix prefix, extracted from
qualifiedName, or null if there is
no prefix
Node.localName local name, extracted from
qualifiedName
Attr.name qualifiedName
Node.nodeValue the empty string
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
qualified name contains an illegal character,
per the XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0].
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is
malformed per the Namespaces in XML
specification, if the qualifiedName has a
prefix and the namespaceURI is null, if the
qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and
the namespaceURI is different from
"http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", or if
the qualifiedName, or its prefix, is "xmlns"
and the namespaceURI is different from
"http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/".
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Always thrown if the current
document does not support the "XML" feature,
since namespaces were defined by XML.
createCDATASection
Creates a CDATASection node whose value is the specified
string.
Parameters
data of type DOMString
The data for the CDATASection contents.
Return Value
CDATASection The new CDATASection object.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is
an HTML document.
createComment
Creates a Comment node given the specified string.
Parameters
data of type DOMString
The data for the node.
Return Value
Comment The new Comment object.
No Exceptions
createDocumentFragment
Creates an empty DocumentFragment object.
Return Value
DocumentFragment A new DocumentFragment.
No Parameters
No Exceptions
createElement
Creates an element of the type specified. Note that the
instance returned implements the Element interface, so
attributes can be specified directly on the returned object.
In addition, if there are known attributes with default
values, Attr nodes representing them are automatically
created and attached to the element.
To create an element with a qualified name and namespace URI,
use the createElementNS method.
Parameters
tagName of type DOMString
The name of the element type to instantiate. For XML,
this is case-sensitive, otherwise it depends on the
case-sentivity of the markup language in use. In that
case, the name is mapped to the canonical form of that
markup by the DOM implementation.
Return Value
Element A new Element object with the nodeName attribute set
to tagName, and localName, prefix, and namespaceURI
set to null.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an illegal character.
createElementNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates an element of the given qualified name and namespace
URI.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the element to create.
qualifiedName of type DOMString
The qualified name of the element type to instantiate.
Return Value
Element A new Element object with the following attributes:
Attribute Value
Node.nodeName qualifiedName
Node.namespaceURInamespaceURI
Node.prefix prefix, extracted from
qualifiedName, or null if there
is no prefix
Node.localName local name, extracted from
qualifiedName
Element.tagName qualifiedName
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
qualified name contains an illegal character,
per the XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0].
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is
malformed per the Namespaces in XML
specification, if the qualifiedName has a
prefix and the namespaceURI is null, or if the
qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and
the namespaceURI is different from
"http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" [XML
Namespaces].
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Always thrown if the current
document does not support the "XML" feature,
since namespaces were defined by XML.
createEntityReference
Creates an EntityReference object. In addition, if the
referenced entity is known, the child list of the
EntityReference node is made the same as that of the
corresponding Entity node.
Note: If any descendant of the Entity node has an unbound
namespace prefix, the corresponding descendant of the created
EntityReference node is also unbound; (its namespaceURI is
null). The DOM Level 2 does not support any mechanism to
resolve namespace prefixes.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the entity to reference.
Return Value
EntityReference The new EntityReference object.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an illegal character.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is
an HTML document.
createProcessingInstruction
Creates a ProcessingInstruction node given the specified name
and data strings.
Parameters
target of type DOMString
The target part of the processing instruction.
data of type DOMString
The data for the node.
Return Value
ProcessingInstruction The new ProcessingInstruction object.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
target contains an illegal character.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is
an HTML document.
createTextNode
Creates a Text node given the specified string.
Parameters
data of type DOMString
The data for the node.
Return Value
Text The new Text object.
No Exceptions
getElementById introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns the Element whose ID is given by elementId. If no
such element exists, returns null. Behavior is not defined if
more than one element has this ID.
Note: The DOM implementation must have information that says
which attributes are of type ID. Attributes with the name
"ID" are not of type ID unless so defined. Implementations
that do not know whether attributes are of type ID or not are
expected to return null.
Parameters
elementId of type DOMString
The unique id value for an element.
Return Value
Element The matching element.
No Exceptions
getElementsByTagName
Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given tag name
in document order.
Parameters
tagname of type DOMString
The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*"
matches all tags. For XML, this is case-sensitive,
otherwise it depends on the case-sentivity of the markup
language in use.
Return Value
NodeList A new NodeList object containing all the matched
Elements.
No Exceptions
getElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given local
name and namespace URI in document order.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The
special value "*" matches all namespaces.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the elements to match on. The special
value "*" matches all local names.
Return Value
NodeList A new NodeList object containing all the matched
Elements.
No Exceptions
getNormalizationFeature introduced in DOM Level 3
Look up the value of a feature.
The feature name has the same form as a DOM hasFeature
string. The recognized features are the same as the ones
defined for setNormalizationFeature.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the feature to look up.
Return Value
boolean The current state of the feature (true or false).
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised when the feature name is
not recognized.
importNode introduced in DOM Level 2
Imports a node from another document to this document. The
returned node has no parent; (parentNode is null). The source
node is not altered or removed from the original document;
this method creates a new copy of the source node.
For all nodes, importing a node creates a node object owned
by the importing document, with attribute values identical to
the source node's nodeName and nodeType, plus the attributes
related to namespaces (prefix, localName, and namespaceURI).
As in the cloneNode operation, the source node is not
altered. User data associated to the imported node is not
carried over. However, if any UserDataHandlers has been
specified along with the associated data these handlers will
be called with the appropriate parameters before this method
returns.
Additional information is copied as appropriate to the
nodeType, attempting to mirror the behavior expected if a
fragment of XML or HTML source was copied from one document
to another, recognizing that the two documents may have
different DTDs in the XML case. The following list describes
the specifics for each type of node.
ATTRIBUTE_NODE
The ownerElement attribute is set to null and the
specified flag is set to true on the generated Attr. The
descendants of the source Attr are recursively imported
and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the
corresponding subtree.
Note that the deep parameter has no effect on Attr
nodes; they always carry their children with them when
imported.
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
If the deep option was set to true, the descendants of
the source DocumentFragment are recursively imported and
the resulting nodes reassembled under the imported
DocumentFragment to form the corresponding subtree.
Otherwise, this simply generates an empty
DocumentFragment.
DOCUMENT_NODE
Document nodes cannot be imported.
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
DocumentType nodes cannot be imported.
ELEMENT_NODE
Specified attribute nodes of the source element are
imported, and the generated Attr nodes are attached to
the generated Element. Default attributes are not
copied, though if the document being imported into
defines default attributes for this element name, those
are assigned. If the importNode deep parameter was set
to true, the descendants of the source element are
recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled
to form the corresponding subtree.
ENTITY_NODE
Entity nodes can be imported, however in the current
release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability
to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be
considered for addition to a future release of the DOM.
On import, the publicId, systemId, and notationName
attributes are copied. If a deep import is requested,
the descendants of the the source Entity are recursively
imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the
corresponding subtree.
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
Only the EntityReference itself is copied, even if a
deep import is requested, since the source and
destination documents might have defined the entity
differently. If the document being imported into
provides a definition for this entity name, its value is
assigned.
NOTATION_NODE
Notation nodes can be imported, however in the current
release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability
to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be
considered for addition to a future release of the DOM.
On import, the publicId and systemId attributes are
copied.
Note that the deep parameter has no effect on this type
of nodes since they cannot have any children.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
The imported node copies its target and data values from
those of the source node.
Note that the deep parameter has no effect on this type
of nodes since they cannot have any children.
TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE
These three types of nodes inheriting from CharacterData
copy their data and length attributes from those of the
source node.
Note that the deep parameter has no effect on these
types of nodes since they cannot have any children.
Parameters
importedNode of type Node
The node to import.
deep of type boolean
If true, recursively import the subtree under the
specified node; if false, import only the node itself,
as explained above. This has no effect on nodes that
cannot have any children, and on Attr, and
EntityReference nodes.
Return Value
Node The imported node that belongs to this Document.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the type of node
being imported is not supported.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if one the
imported names contain an illegal character.
This may happen when importing an XML 1.1 [XML
1.1] element into an XML 1.0 document, for
instance.
normalizeDocument introduced in DOM Level 3
This method acts as if the document was going through a save
and load cycle, putting the document in a "normal" form. The
actual result depends on the features being set and governing
what operations actually take place. See setNormalizeFeature
for details.
Noticeably this method normalizes Text nodes, makes the
document "namespace wellformed", according to the algorithm
described below in pseudo code, by adding missing namespace
declaration attributes and adding or changing namespace
prefixes, updates the replacement tree of EntityReference
nodes, normalizes attribute values, etc.
See Namespace normalization for details on how namespace
declaration attributes and prefixes are normalized.
Issue normalizeNS-1:
Any other name? Joe proposes normalizeNamespaces.
Resolution: normalizeDocument. (F2F 26 Sep 2001)
Issue normalizeNS-2:
How specific should this be? Should we not even specify
that this should be done by walking down the tree?
Resolution: Very. See above.
Issue normalizeNS-3:
What does this do on attribute nodes?
Resolution: Doesn't do anything (F2F 1 Aug 2000).
Issue normalizeNS-4:
How does it work with entity reference subtree which may
be broken?
Resolution: This doesn't affect entity references which
are not visited in this operation (F2F 1 Aug 2000).
Issue normalizeNS-5:
Should this really be on Node?
Resolution: Yes, but this only works on Document,
Element, and DocumentFragment. On other types it is a
no-op. (F2F 1 Aug 2000).
No. Now that it does much more than simply fixing
namespaces it only makes sense on Document (F2F 26 Sep
2001).
Issue normalizeNS-6:
What happens with read-only nodes?
Issue normalizeNS-7:
What/how errors should be reported? Are there any?
Resolution: Through the error reporter.
Issue normalizeNS-8:
Should this be optional?
Resolution: No.
Issue normalizeNS-9:
What happens with regard to mutation events?
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
renameNode introduced in DOM Level 3
Rename an existing node. When possible this simply changes
the name of the given node, otherwise this creates a new node
with the specified name and replaces the existing node with
the new node as described below. This only applies to nodes
of type ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE.
When a new node is created, the following operations are
performed: the new node is created, any registered event
listener is registered on the new node, any user data
attached to the old node is removed from that node, the old
node is removed from its parent if it has one, the children
are moved to the new node, if the renamed node is an Element
its attributes are moved to the new node, the new node is
inserted at the position the old node used to have in its
parent's child nodes list if it has one, the user data that
was attached to the old node is attach to the new node, the
user data event NODE_RENAMED is fired.
When the node being renamed is an Attr that is attached to an
Element, the node is first removed from the Element
attributes map. Then, once renamed, either by modifying the
existing node or creating a new one as described above, it is
put back.
In addition, when the implementation supports the feature
"MutationEvents", each mutation operation involved in this
method fires the appropriate event, and in the end the event
ElementNameChanged or AttributeNameChanged is fired.
Issue renameNode-1:
Should this throw a HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR?
Parameters
n of type Node
The node to rename.
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The new namespaceURI.
name of type DOMString
The new qualified name.
Return Value
Node The renamed node. This is either the specified node or
the new node that was created to replace the specified
node.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised when the type of the
specified node is neither ELEMENT_NODE nor
ATTRIBUTE_NODE.
setNormalizationFeature introduced in DOM Level 3
Set the state of a feature.
Issue normalizationFeature-1:
Need to specify the list of features.
Feature names are valid XML names. Implementation specific
features (extensions) should choose an implementation
specific prefix to avoid name collisions. The following lists
feature names that are recognized by all implementations.
However, it is sometimes possible for a Document to recognize
a feature but not to support setting its value. The following
list of recognized features indicates the definitions of each
feature state, if setting the state to true or false must be
supported or is optional and, which state is the default one:
"normalize-characters"
true
[optional]
Perform the W3C Text Normalization of the
characters [CharModel] in the document.
false
[required] (default)
Do not perform character normalization.
"split-cdata-sections"
true
[required] (default)
Split CDATA sections containing the CDATA section
termination marker ']]>'. When a CDATA section is
split a warning is issued.
false
[required]
Signal an error if a CDATASection contains an
unrepresentable character.
"expand-entity-references"
true
[optional]
Expand EntityReference nodes when normalizing.
false
[required] (default)
Keep all EntityReference nodes in document.
"whitespace-in-element-content"
true
[required] (default)
Keep all white spaces in the document.
false
[optional]
Discard white space in element content while
normalizing. The implementation is expected to use
the isWhitespaceInElementContent flag on Text nodes
to determine if a text node should be written out
or not.
"discard-default-content"
true
[required] (default)
Use whatever information available to the
implementation (i.e. XML schema, DTD, the specified
flag on Attr nodes, and so on) to decide what
attributes and content should be discarded or not.
Note that the specified flag on Attr nodes in
itself is not always reliable, it is only reliable
when it is set to false since the only case where
it can be set to false is if the attribute was
created by a Level 1 implementation.
Issue normalizationFeature-2:
How does exactly work? What's the comment
about level 1 implementations?
false
[required]
Keep all attributes and all content.
"format-canonical"
true
[optional]
Canonicalize the document according to the rules
specified in [Canonical XML]. Setting this feature
to true sets the feature "format-pretty-print" to
false.
false
[required] (default)
Do not canonicalize the document.
"format-pretty-print"
true
[optional]
Format the document by adding whitespace to produce
a pretty-printed, indented, human-readable form.
The exact form of the transformations is not
specified by this specification. Setting this
feature to true sets the feature "format-canonical"
to false.
false
[required] (default)
Do not pretty-print the document.
"namespace-declarations"
true
[required] (default)
Include namespace declaration attributes, specified
or defaulted from the schema or the DTD, in the
document. See also the section Declaring Namespaces
in [XML Namespaces].
false
[optional]
Discard all namespace declaration attributes. The
Namespace prefixes are retained even if this
feature is set to false.
"validation"
true
[optional]
Use the abstract schema to validate the document as
it is being normalized. If validation errors are
found the error handler is notified. Setting it to
true also forces the external-general-entities and
external-parameter-entities features to be true.)
Also note that the validate-if-schema feature
alters the validation behavior when this feature is
set to true.
false
[required] (default)
Do not report validation errors.
"external-parameter-entities"
true
[required]
Load external parameter entities.
Issue normalizationFeature-3:
Doesn't really apply, does it? What does
including them mean? Also, false can't be the
default and be optional at the same time.
false
[optional] (default)
Do not load external parameter entities.
"external-general-entities"
true
[required] (default)
Include all external general (text) entities.
Issue normalizationFeature-4:
Doesn't really apply, does it? What does
including them mean?
false
[optional]
Do not include external general entities.
"external-dtd-subset"
true
[required] (default)
Load the external DTD subset and also all external
parameter entities.
Issue normalizationFeature-5:
Doesn't really apply, does it? What does
loading mean here?
false
[optional]
Do not load the external DTD subset nor external
parameter entities.
"validate-if-schema"
true
[optional]
When both this feature and validation are true,
enable validation only if the document being
processed has a schema (i.e. XML schema, DTD, any
other type of schema, note that this is unrelated
to the abstract schema specification). Documents
without schemas are normalized without validation.
Issue normalizationFeature-6:
How does that interact with the notion of
active AS?
false
[required] (default)
The validation feature alone controls whether the
document is checked for validity. Documents without
a schemas are not valid.
"validate-against-dtd"
true
[optional]
Prefer validation against the DTD over any other
schema used with the document.
Issue normalizationFeature-7:
How does that interact with the notion of
active AS?
false
[required] (default)
Let the implementation decide what to validate
against if multiple types of schemas are in use.
"datatype-normalization"
true
[required]
Let the (non-DTD) validation process do its
datatype normalization that is defined in the used
schema language.
Issue normalizationFeature-8:
We should define "datatype normalization".
false
[required] (default)
Disable datatype normalization. The XML 1.0
attribute value normalization always occurs though.
"create-entity-ref-nodes"
true
[required] (default)
Create EntityReference nodes in the document. It
will also set create-entity-nodes to be true.
Issue normalizationFeature-9:
How does that interact with
expand-entity-references? ALH suggests
consolidating the two to a single feature
called "entity-references" that is used both
for load and save.
false
[optional]
Omit all EntityReference nodes from the document,
putting the entity expansions directly in their
place. Text nodes are into "normal" form.
EntityReference nodes to non-defined entities are
still created in the document.
"create-entity-nodes"
true
[required] (default)
Create Entity nodes in the document.
Issue normalizationFeature-10:
How does that interact with
expand-entity-references? ALH suggests
renaming this one "entity-nodes", or simply
"entities" for consistency.
false
[optional]
Omit all entity nodes from the document. It also
sets create-entity-ref-nodes to false.
"create-cdata-nodes"
true
[required] (default)
Keep CDATASection nodes the document.
Issue normalizationFeature-11:
Name does not work really well in this case.
ALH suggests renaming this to
"cdata-sections". It works for both load and
save.
false
[optional]
Transform CDATASection nodes in the document into
Text nodes. The new Text node is then combined with
any adjacent Text node.
"comments"
true
[required] (default)
Keep Comment nodes in the document.
false
[required]
Discard Comment nodes in the Document.
"load-as-infoset"
true
[optional]
Only keep in the document the information defined
in the XML Information Set [XML Information set].
This forces the following features to false:
namespace-declarations, validate-if-schema,
create-entity-ref-nodes, create-entity-nodes,
create-cdata-nodes.
This forces the following features to true:
datatype-normalization,
whitespace-in-element-content, comments.
Other features are not changed unless explicity
specified in the description of the features.
Note that querying this feature with getFeature
returns true only if the individual features
specified above are appropriately set.
Issue normalizationFeature-12:
Name doesn't work well here. ALH suggests
renaming this to limit-to-infoset or
match-infoset, something like that.
false
Setting load-as-infoset to false has no effect.
Issue normalizationFeature-13:
Shouldn't we change this to setting the
relevant options back to their default value?
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the feature to set.
state of type boolean
The requested state of the feature (true or false).
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised when the feature name
is recognized but the requested value cannot be
set.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised when the feature name is
not recognized.
No Return Value
Interface Node
The Node interface is the primary datatype for the entire Document
Object Model. It represents a single node in the document tree. While
all objects implementing the Node interface expose methods for dealing
with children, not all objects implementing the Node interface may have
children. For example, Text nodes may not have children, and adding
children to such nodes results in a DOMException being raised.
The attributes nodeName, nodeValue and attributes are included as a
mechanism to get at node information without casting down to the
specific derived interface. In cases where there is no obvious mapping
of these attributes for a specific nodeType (e.g., nodeValue for an
Element or attributes for a Comment), this returns null. Note that the
specialized interfaces may contain additional and more convenient
mechanisms to get and set the relevant information.
IDL Definition
interface Node {
// NodeType
const unsigned short ELEMENT_NODE = 1;
const unsigned short ATTRIBUTE_NODE = 2;
const unsigned short TEXT_NODE = 3;
const unsigned short CDATA_SECTION_NODE = 4;
const unsigned short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE = 5;
const unsigned short ENTITY_NODE = 6;
const unsigned short PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE = 7;
const unsigned short COMMENT_NODE = 8;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_NODE = 9;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE = 10;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE = 11;
const unsigned short NOTATION_NODE = 12;
readonly attribute DOMString nodeName;
attribute DOMString nodeValue;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
readonly attribute unsigned short nodeType;
readonly attribute Node parentNode;
readonly attribute NodeList childNodes;
readonly attribute Node firstChild;
readonly attribute Node lastChild;
readonly attribute Node previousSibling;
readonly attribute Node nextSibling;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap attributes;
// Modified in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute Document ownerDocument;
// Modified in DOM Level 3:
Node insertBefore(in Node newChild,
in Node refChild)
raises(DOMException);
// Modified in DOM Level 3:
Node replaceChild(in Node newChild,
in Node oldChild)
raises(DOMException);
// Modified in DOM Level 3:
Node removeChild(in Node oldChild)
raises(DOMException);
Node appendChild(in Node newChild)
raises(DOMException);
boolean hasChildNodes();
Node cloneNode(in boolean deep);
// Modified in DOM Level 2:
void normalize();
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean isSupported(in DOMString feature,
in DOMString version);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString namespaceURI;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
attribute DOMString prefix;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString localName;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean hasAttributes();
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
readonly attribute DOMString baseURI;
// TreePosition
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING = 0x01;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING = 0x02;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR = 0x04;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT = 0x08;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT = 0x10;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE = 0x20;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED = 0x00;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
unsigned short compareTreePosition(in Node other);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString textContent;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
boolean isSameNode(in Node other);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMString lookupNamespacePrefix(in DOMString namespaceURI);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMString lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString prefix);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
boolean isEqualNode(in Node arg,
in boolean deep);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
Node getInterface(in DOMString feature);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMKeyObject setUserData(in DOMString key,
in DOMKeyObject data,
in UserDataHandler handler);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMKeyObject getUserData(in DOMString key);
};
Definition group NodeType
An integer indicating which type of node this is.
Note: Numeric codes up to 200 are reserved to W3C for possible
future use.
Defined Constants
ATTRIBUTE_NODE
The node is an Attr.
CDATA_SECTION_NODE
The node is a CDATASection.
COMMENT_NODE
The node is a Comment.
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
The node is a DocumentFragment.
DOCUMENT_NODE
The node is a Document.
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
The node is a DocumentType.
ELEMENT_NODE
The node is an Element.
ENTITY_NODE
The node is an Entity.
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
The node is an EntityReference.
NOTATION_NODE
The node is a Notation.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
The node is a ProcessingInstruction.
TEXT_NODE
The node is a Text node.
The values of nodeName, nodeValue, and attributes vary according
to the node type as follows:
Interface nodeName nodeValue attributes
Attr name of attribute value of null
attribute
CDATASection "#cdata-section" content of null
the CDATA
Section
Comment "#comment" content of null
the
comment
Document "#document" null null
DocumentFragment "#document-fragment" null null
DocumentType document type name null null
Element tag name null NamedNodeMap
Entity entity name null null
EntityReference name of entity null null
referenced
Notation notation name null null
ProcessingInstructiontarget entire null
content
excluding
the target
Text "#text" content of null
the text
node
Definition group TreePosition
A bitmask indicating the relative tree position of a node with
respect to another node.
Issue TreePosition-1:
Should we use fewer bits?
Resolution: No. Simpler that way.
Issue TreePosition-2:
How does a node compare to itself?
Resolution: SAME_NODE and EQUIVALENT. (F2F 26 Sep 2001)
Defined Constants
TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR
The node is an ancestor of the reference node.
TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT
The node is a descendant of the reference node.
TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED
The two nodes are disconnected, they do not have any
common ancestor. This is the case of two nodes that are
not in the same document.
TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT
The two nodes have an equivalent position. This is the
case of two attributes that have the same ownerElement,
and two nodes that are the same.
TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING
The node follows the reference node.
TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING
The node precedes the reference node.
TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE
The two nodes are the same. Two nodes that are the same
have an equivalent position, though the reverse may not
be true.
Attributes
attributes of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
A NamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it
is an Element) or null otherwise.
If no namespace declaration appear in the attributes, this
attribute represents the property [attributes] defined in
[XML Information set].
baseURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
The absolute base URI of this node or null if undefined. This
value is computed according to [XML Base]. However, when the
Document supports the feature "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML], the
base URI is computed using first the value of the href
attribute of the HTML BASE element if any, and the value of
the documentURI attribute from the Document interface
otherwise.
When the node is an Element, a Document or a a
ProcessingInstruction, this attribute represents the
properties [base URI] defined in [XML Information set]. When
the node is a Notation, an Entity, or an EntityReference,
this attribute represents the properties [declaration base
URI] in the [XML Information set].
Issue baseURI-1:
How will this be affected by resolution of relative
namespace URIs issue?
Resolution: It's not.
Issue baseURI-2:
Should this only be on Document, Element,
ProcessingInstruction, Entity, and Notation nodes,
according to the infoset? If not, what is it equal to on
other nodes? Null? An empty string? I think it should be
the parent's.
Resolution: No.
Issue baseURI-3:
Should this be read-only and computed or and actual
read-write attribute?
Resolution: Read-only and computed (F2F 19 Jun 2000 and
teleconference 30 May 2001).
Issue baseURI-4:
If the base HTML element is not yet attached to a
document, does the insert change the Document.baseURI?
Resolution: Yes. (F2F 26 Sep 2001)
childNodes of type NodeList, readonly
A NodeList that contains all children of this node. If there
are no children, this is a NodeList containing no nodes.
When the node is a Document, or an Element, and if the
NodeList does not contain EntityReference or CDATASection
nodes, this attribute represents the properties [children]
defined in [XML Information set].
firstChild of type Node, readonly
The first child of this node. If there is no such node, this
returns null.
lastChild of type Node, readonly
The last child of this node. If there is no such node, this
returns null.
localName of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node.
When the node is Element, or Attr, this attribute represents
the properties [local name] defined in [XML Information set].
For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and
ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method,
such as createElement from the Document interface, this is
always null.
namespaceURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level
2
The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified.
When the node is Element, or Attr, this attribute represents
the properties [namespace name] defined in [XML Information
set].
This is not a computed value that is the result of a
namespace lookup based on an examination of the namespace
declarations in scope. It is merely the namespace URI given
at creation time.
For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and
ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method,
such as createElement from the Document interface, this is
always null.
Note: Per the Namespaces in XML Specification [XML
Namespaces] an attribute does not inherit its namespace from
the element it is attached to. If an attribute is not
explicitly given a namespace, it simply has no namespace.
nextSibling of type Node, readonly
The node immediately following this node. If there is no such
node, this returns null.
nodeName of type DOMString, readonly
The name of this node, depending on its type; see the table
above.
nodeType of type unsigned short, readonly
A code representing the type of the underlying object, as
defined above.
nodeValue of type DOMString
The value of this node, depending on its type; see the table
above. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no
effect.
Exceptions on setting
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the
node is readonly.
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return
more characters than fit in a DOMString
variable on the implementation platform.
ownerDocument of type Document, readonly, modified in DOM Level 2
The Document object associated with this node. This is also
the Document object used to create new nodes. When this node
is a Document or a DocumentType which is not used with any
Document yet, this is null.
parentNode of type Node, readonly
The parent of this node. All nodes, except Attr, Document,
DocumentFragment, Entity, and Notation may have a parent.
However, if a node has just been created and not yet added to
the tree, or if it has been removed from the tree, this is
null.
When the node is an Element, a ProcessingInstruction, an
EntityReference, a CharacterData, a Comment, or a
DocumentType, this attribute represents the properties
[parent] defined in [XML Information set].
prefix of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 2
The namespace prefix of this node, or null if it is
unspecified.
When the node is Element, or Attr, this attribute represents
the properties [prefix] defined in [XML Information set].
Note that setting this attribute, when permitted, changes the
nodeName attribute, which holds the qualified name, as well
as the tagName and name attributes of the Element and Attr
interfaces, when applicable.
Note also that changing the prefix of an attribute that is
known to have a default value, does not make a new attribute
with the default value and the original prefix appear, since
the namespaceURI and localName do not change.
For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and
ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method,
such as createElement from the Document interface, this is
always null.
Exceptions on setting
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
prefix contains an illegal character, per the
XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0].
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the specified prefix
is malformed per the Namespaces in XML
specification, if the namespaceURI of this node
is null, if the specified prefix is "xml" and
the namespaceURI of this node is different from
"http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", if this
node is an attribute and the specified prefix
is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI of this node is
different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/",
or if this node is an attribute and the
qualifiedName of this node is "xmlns" [XML
Namespaces].
previousSibling of type Node, readonly
The node immediately preceding this node. If there is no such
node, this returns null.
textContent of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
This attribute returns the text content of this node and its
descendants. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no
effect. When set, any possible children this node may have
are removed and replaced by a single Text node containing the
string this attribute is set to. On getting, no serialization
is performed, the returned string does not contain any
markup. No whitespace normalization is performed, the
returned string does not contain the element content
whitespaces Fundamental Interfaces. Similarly, on setting, no
parsing is performed either, the input string is taken as
pure textual content.
The string returned is made of the text content of this node
depending on its type, as defined below:
Node type Content
ELEMENT_NODE, ENTITY_NODE, concatenation of the
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE, textContent attribute value
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE of every child node,
excluding COMMENT_NODE and
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
nodes
ATTRIBUTE_NODE, TEXT_NODE, nodeValue
CDATA_SECTION_NODE,
COMMENT_NODE,
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
DOCUMENT_NODE, null
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE,
NOTATION_NODE
Issue textContent-1:
Should any whitespace normalization be performed? MS'
text property doesn't but what about "ignorable
whitespace"?
Resolution: Does not perform any whitespace
normalization and ignores "ignorable whitespace".
Issue textContent-2:
Should this be two methods instead?
Resolution: No. Keep it a read write attribute.
Issue textContent-3:
What about the name? MS uses text and innerText. text
conflicts with HTML DOM.
Resolution: Keep the current name, MS has a different
name and different semantic.
Issue textContent-4:
Should this be optional?
Resolution: No.
Issue textContent-5:
Setting the text property on a Document, Document Type,
or Notation node is an error for MS. How do we expose
it? Exception? Which one?
Resolution: (teleconference 23 May 2001) consistency
with nodeValue. Remove Document from the list.
Exceptions on setting
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the
node is readonly.
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return
more characters than fit in a DOMString
variable on the implementation platform.
Methods
appendChild
Adds the node newChild to the end of the list of children of
this node. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is
first removed.
Parameters
newChild of type Node
The node to add.
If it is a DocumentFragment object, the entire contents
of the document fragment are moved into the child list
of this node
Return Value
Node The node added.
Exceptions
DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is
of a type that does not allow children of the
type of the newChild node, or if the node to
append is one of this node's ancestors or this
node itself.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newChild was
created from a different document than the one
that created this node.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly or if the previous parent of
the node being inserted is readonly.
cloneNode
Returns a duplicate of this node, i.e., serves as a generic
copy constructor for nodes. The duplicate node has no parent;
(parentNode is null.) and no user data. User data associated
to the imported node is not carried over. However, if any
UserDataHandlers has been specified along with the associated
data these handlers will be called with the appropriate
parameters before this method returns.
Cloning an Element copies all attributes and their values,
including those generated by the XML processor to represent
defaulted attributes, but this method does not copy any
children it contains unless it is a deep clone. This includes
text contained in an the Element since the text is contained
in a child Text node. Cloning an Attribute directly, as
opposed to be cloned as part of an Element cloning operation,
returns a specified attribute (specified is true). Cloning an
Attribute always clones its children, since they represent
its value, no matter whether this is a deep clone or not.
Cloning an EntityReference automatically constructs its
subtree if a corresponding Entity is available, no matter
whether this is a deep clone or not. Cloning any other type
of node simply returns a copy of this node.
Note that cloning an immutable subtree results in a mutable
copy, but the children of an EntityReference clone are
readonly. In addition, clones of unspecified Attr nodes are
specified. And, cloning Document, DocumentType, Entity, and
Notation nodes is implementation dependent.
Parameters
deep of type boolean
If true, recursively clone the subtree under the
specified node; if false, clone only the node itself
(and its attributes, if it is an Element).
Return Value
Node The duplicate node.
No Exceptions
compareTreePosition introduced in DOM Level 3
Compares a node with this node with regard to their position
in the tree and according to the document order. This order
can be extended by module that define additional types of
nodes.
Issue compareTreePosition-1:
Should this method be optional?
Resolution: No.
Issue compareTreePosition-2:
Need reference for namespace nodes.
Resolution: No, instead avoid referencing them directly.
Parameters
other of type Node
The node to compare against this node.
Return Value
unsigned short Returns how the given node is positioned
relatively to this node.
No Exceptions
getInterface introduced in DOM Level 3
This method makes available a Node's specialized interface
(see Mixed DOM implementations).
Issue EDOM-isSupported:
What are the relations between Node.isSupported and
Node3.getInterface?
Issue EDOM-getInterface-1:
Should we rename this method (and also
DOMImplementation.getInterface?)?
Issue EDOM-getInterface-2:
getInterface can return a node that doesn't actually
support the requested interface and will lead to a cast
exception. Other solutions are returning null or
throwing an exception.
Parameters
feature of type DOMString
The name of the feature requested (case-insensitive).
Return Value
Node Returns an alternate Node which implements the
specialized APIs of the specified feature, if any, or
null if there is no alternate Node which implements
interfaces associated with that feature. Any alternate
Node returned by this method must delegate to the
primary core Node and not return results inconsistent
with the primary core Node such as key, attributes,
childNodes, etc.
No Exceptions
getUserData introduced in DOM Level 3
Retrieves the object associated to a key on a this node. The
object must first have been set to this node by calling
setUserData with the same key.
Parameters
key of type DOMString
The key the object is associated to.
Return Value
DOMKeyObject Returns the DOMKeyObject associated to the
given key on this node, or null if there was
none.
No Exceptions
hasAttributes introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns whether this node (if it is an element) has any
attributes.
Return Value
boolean true if this node has any attributes, false
otherwise.
No Parameters
No Exceptions
hasChildNodes
Returns whether this node has any children.
Return Value
boolean true if this node has any children, false otherwise.
No Parameters
No Exceptions
insertBefore modified in DOM Level 3
Inserts the node newChild before the existing child node
refChild. If refChild is null, insert newChild at the end of
the list of children.
If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, all of its children
are inserted, in the same order, before refChild. If the
newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed.
Parameters
newChild of type Node
The node to insert.
refChild of type Node
The reference node, i.e., the node before which the new
node must be inserted.
Return Value
Node The node being inserted.
Exceptions
DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is
of a type that does not allow children of the
type of the newChild node, or if the node to
insert is one of this node's ancestors or this
node itself, or if this node if of type
Document and the DOM application attempts to
insert a second DocumentType or Element node.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newChild was
created from a different document than the one
that created this node.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly or if the parent of the node
being inserted is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if refChild is not a
child of this node.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: if this node if of type
Document, this exception might be raised if the
DOM implementation doesn't support the
insertion of a DocumentType or Element node.
isEqualNode introduced in DOM Level 3
Tests whether two nodes are equal.
This method tests for equality of nodes, not sameness (i.e.,
whether the two nodes are references to the same object)
which can be tested with Node.isSameNode. All nodes that are
the same will also be equal, though the reverse may not be
true.
Two nodes are equal if and only if the following conditions
are satisfied:
+ The two nodes are of the same type.
+ The following string attributes are equal: nodeName,
localName, namespaceURI, prefix, nodeValue, baseURI.
This is: they are both null, or they have the same
length and are character for character identical.
+ The attributes NamedNodeMaps are equal. This is: they
are both null, or they have the same length and for each
node that exists in one map there is a node that exists
in the other map and is equal, although not necessarily
at the same index.
+ The childNodes NodeLists are equal. This is: they are
both null, or they have the same length and contain
equal nodes at the same index. This is true for Attr
nodes as for any other type of node. Note that
normalization can affect equality; to avoid this, nodes
should be normalized before being compared.
For two DocumentType nodes to be equal, the following
conditions must also be satisfied:
+ The following string attributes are equal: publicId,
systemId, internalSubset.
+ The entities NamedNodeMaps are equal.
+ The notations NamedNodeMaps are equal.
On the other hand, the following do not affect equality: the
ownerDocument attribute, the specified attribute for Attr
nodes, the isWhitespaceInElementContent attribute for Text
nodes, as well as any user data or event listeners registered
on the nodes.
Issue isEqualNode-1:
Should this be optional?
Resolution: No.
Parameters
arg of type Node
The node to compare equality with.
deep of type boolean
If true, recursively compare the subtrees; if false,
compare only the nodes themselves (and its attributes,
if it is an Element).
Return Value
boolean If the nodes, and possibly subtrees are equal, true
otherwise false.
No Exceptions
isSameNode introduced in DOM Level 3
Returns whether this node is the same node as the given one.
This method provides a way to determine whether two Node
references returned by the implementation reference the same
object. When two Node references are references to the same
object, even if through a proxy, the references may be used
completely interchangeably, such that all attributes have the
same values and calling the same DOM method on either
reference always has exactly the same effect.
Issue isSameNode-1:
Do we really want to make this different from equals?
Resolution: Yes, change name from isIdentical to
isSameNode. (Telcon 4 Jul 2000).
Issue isSameNode-2:
Is this really needed if we provide a unique key?
Resolution: Yes, because the key is only unique within a
document. (F2F 2 Mar 2001).
Issue isSameNode-3:
Definition of 'sameness' is needed.
Parameters
other of type Node
The node to test against.
Return Value
boolean Returns true if the nodes are the same, false
otherwise.
No Exceptions
isSupported introduced in DOM Level 2
Tests whether the DOM implementation implements a specific
feature and that feature is supported by this node.
Parameters
feature of type DOMString
The name of the feature to test. This is the same name
which can be passed to the method hasFeature on
DOMImplementation.
version of type DOMString
This is the version number of the feature to test. In
Level 2, version 1, this is the string "2.0". If the
version is not specified, supporting any version of the
feature will cause the method to return true.
Return Value
boolean Returns true if the specified feature is supported
on this node, false otherwise.
No Exceptions
lookupNamespacePrefix introduced in DOM Level 3
Look up the prefix associated to the given namespace URI,
starting from this node.
See Namespace Prefix Lookup for details on the algorithm used
by this method.
Issue lookupNamespacePrefix-1:
Should this be optional?
Resolution: No.
Issue lookupNamespacePrefix-2:
How does the lookup work? Is it based on the prefix of
the nodes, the namespace declaration attributes, or a
combination of both?
Resolution: See Namespace Prefix Lookup.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI to look for.
Return Value
DOMString Returns the associated namespace prefix or null if
none is found. If more than one prefix are
associated to the namespace prefix, the returned
namespace prefix is implementation dependent.
No Exceptions
lookupNamespaceURI introduced in DOM Level 3
Look up the namespace URI associated to the given prefix,
starting from this node.
See Namespace URI Lookup for details on the algorithm used by
this method.
Issue lookupNamespaceURI-1:
Name? May need to change depending on ending of the
relative namespace URI reference nightmare.
Resolution: No need.
Issue lookupNamespaceURI-2:
Should this be optional?
Resolution: No.
Issue lookupNamespaceURI-3:
How does the lookup work? Is it based on the
namespaceURI of the nodes, the namespace declaration
attributes, or a combination of both?
Resolution: See Namespace URI Lookup.
Parameters
prefix of type DOMString
The prefix to look for.
Return Value
DOMString Returns the associated namespace URI or null if
none is found.
No Exceptions
normalize modified in DOM Level 2
Puts all Text nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree
underneath this Node, including attribute nodes, into a
"normal" form where only structure (e.g., elements, comments,
processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity
references) separates Text nodes, i.e., there are neither
adjacent Text nodes nor empty Text nodes. This can be used to
ensure that the DOM view of a document is the same as if it
were saved and re-loaded, and is useful when operations (such
as XPointer [XPointer] lookups) that depend on a particular
document tree structure are to be used.
Note: In cases where the document contains CDATASections, the
normalize operation alone may not be sufficient, since
XPointers do not differentiate between Text nodes and
CDATASection nodes.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
removeChild modified in DOM Level 3
Removes the child node indicated by oldChild from the list of
children, and returns it.
Parameters
oldChild of type Node
The node being removed.
Return Value
Node The node removed.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldChild is not a
child of this node.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: if this node if of type
Document, this exception might be raised if the
DOM implementation doesn't support the removal
of the DocumentType child or the Element child.
replaceChild modified in DOM Level 3
Replaces the child node oldChild with newChild in the list of
children, and returns the oldChild node.
If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, oldChild is
replaced by all of the DocumentFragment children, which are
inserted in the same order. If the newChild is already in the
tree, it is first removed.
Parameters
newChild of type Node
The new node to put in the child list.
oldChild of type Node
The node being replaced in the list.
Return Value
Node The node replaced.
Exceptions
DOMException HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is
of a type that does not allow children of the
type of the newChild node, or if the node to
put in is one of this node's ancestors or this
node itself.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newChild was
created from a different document than the one
that created this node.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node or the parent of the new node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldChild is not a
child of this node.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: if this node if of type
Document, this exception might be raised if the
DOM implementation doesn't support the
replacement of the DocumentType child or
Element child.
setUserData introduced in DOM Level 3
Associate an object to a key on this node. The object can
later be retrieved from this node by calling getUserData with
the same key.
Parameters
key of type DOMString
The key to associate the object to.
data of type DOMKeyObject
The object to associate to the given key, or null to
remove any existing association to that key.
handler of type UserDataHandler
The handler to associate to that key, or null.
Return Value
DOMKeyObject Returns the DOMKeyObject previously associated
to the given key on this node, or null if there
was none.
No Exceptions
Interface NodeList
The NodeList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered
collection of nodes, without defining or constraining how this
collection is implemented. NodeList objects in the DOM are live.
The items in the NodeList are accessible via an integral index,
starting from 0.
IDL Definition
interface NodeList {
Node item(in unsigned long index);
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
};
Attributes
length of type unsigned long, readonly
The number of nodes in the list. The range of valid child
node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.
Methods
item
Returns the indexth item in the collection. If index is
greater than or equal to the number of nodes in the list,
this returns null.
Parameters
index of type unsigned long
Index into the collection.
Return Value
Node The node at the indexth position in the NodeList, or
null if that is not a valid index.
No Exceptions
Interface NamedNodeMap
Objects implementing the NamedNodeMap interface are used to represent
collections of nodes that can be accessed by name. Note that
NamedNodeMap does not inherit from NodeList; NamedNodeMaps are not
maintained in any particular order. Objects contained in an object
implementing NamedNodeMap may also be accessed by an ordinal index, but
this is simply to allow convenient enumeration of the contents of a
NamedNodeMap, and does not imply that the DOM specifies an order to
these Nodes.
NamedNodeMap objects in the DOM are live.
IDL Definition
interface NamedNodeMap {
Node getNamedItem(in DOMString name);
Node setNamedItem(in Node arg)
raises(DOMException);
Node removeNamedItem(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
Node item(in unsigned long index);
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node getNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node setNamedItemNS(in Node arg)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node removeNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName)
raises(DOMException);
};
Attributes
length of type unsigned long, readonly
The number of nodes in this map. The range of valid child
node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.
Methods
getNamedItem
Retrieves a node specified by name.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The nodeName of a node to retrieve.
Return Value
Node A Node (of any type) with the specified nodeName, or
null if it does not identify any node in this map.
No Exceptions
getNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Retrieves a node specified by local name and namespace URI.
Documents which do not support the "XML" feature will permit
only the DOM Level 1 calls for creating/setting elements and
attributes. Hence, if you specify a non-null namespace URI,
these DOMs will never find a matching node.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the node to retrieve.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the node to retrieve.
Return Value
Node A Node (of any type) with the specified local name and
namespace URI, or null if they do not identify any node
in this map.
No Exceptions
item
Returns the indexth item in the map. If index is greater than
or equal to the number of nodes in this map, this returns
null.
Parameters
index of type unsigned long
Index into this map.
Return Value
Node The node at the indexth position in the map, or null if
that is not a valid index.
No Exceptions
removeNamedItem
Removes a node specified by name. When this map contains the
attributes attached to an element, if the removed attribute
is known to have a default value, an attribute immediately
appears containing the default value as well as the
corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when
applicable.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The nodeName of the node to remove.
Return Value
Node The node removed from this map if a node with such a
name exists.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if there is no node named
name in this map.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map
is readonly.
removeNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Removes a node specified by local name and namespace URI. A
removed attribute may be known to have a default value when
this map contains the attributes attached to an element, as
returned by the attributes attribute of the Node interface.
If so, an attribute immediately appears containing the
default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI,
local name, and prefix when applicable.
Documents which do not support the "XML" feature will permit
only the DOM Level 1 calls for creating/setting elements and
attributes. Hence, if you specify a non-null namespace URI,
these DOMs will never find a matching node.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the node to remove.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the node to remove.
Return Value
Node The node removed from this map if a node with such a
local name and namespace URI exists.
Exceptions
DOMException NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if there is no node with
the specified namespaceURI and localName in
this map.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map
is readonly.
setNamedItem
Adds a node using its nodeName attribute. If a node with that
name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the
new one.
As the nodeName attribute is used to derive the name which
the node must be stored under, multiple nodes of certain
types (those that have a "special" string value) cannot be
stored as the names would clash. This is seen as preferable
to allowing nodes to be aliased.
Parameters
arg of type Node
A node to store in this map. The node will later be
accessible using the value of its nodeName attribute.
Return Value
Node If the new Node replaces an existing node the replaced
Node is returned, otherwise null is returned.
Exceptions
DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if arg was created
from a different document than the one that
created this map.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map
is readonly.
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if arg is an Attr
that is already an attribute of another Element
object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr
nodes to re-use them in other elements.
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if an attempt is
made to add a node doesn't belong in this
NamedNodeMap. Examples would include trying to
insert something other than an Attr node into
an Element's map of attributes, or a non-Entity
node into the DocumentType's map of Entities.
setNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a node using its namespaceURI and localName. If a node
with that namespace URI and that local name is already
present in this map, it is replaced by the new one.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
arg of type Node
A node to store in this map. The node will later be
accessible using the value of its namespaceURI and
localName attributes.
Return Value
Node If the new Node replaces an existing node the replaced
Node is returned, otherwise null is returned.
Exceptions
DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if arg was created
from a different document than the one that
created this map.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map
is readonly.
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if arg is an Attr
that is already an attribute of another Element
object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr
nodes to re-use them in other elements.
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if an attempt is
made to add a node doesn't belong in this
NamedNodeMap. Examples would include trying to
insert something other than an Attr node into
an Element's map of attributes, or a non-Entity
node into the DocumentType's map of Entities.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Always thrown if the current
document does not support the "XML" feature,
since namespaces were defined by XML.
Interface CharacterData
The CharacterData interface extends Node with a set of attributes and
methods for accessing character data in the DOM. For clarity this set
is defined here rather than on each object that uses these attributes
and methods. No DOM objects correspond directly to CharacterData,
though Text and others do inherit the interface from it. All offsets in
this interface start from 0.
As explained in the DOMString interface, text strings in the DOM are
represented in UTF-16, i.e. as a sequence of 16-bit units. In the
following, the term 16-bit units is used whenever necessary to indicate
that indexing on CharacterData is done in 16-bit units.
IDL Definition
interface CharacterData : Node {
attribute DOMString data;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
DOMString substringData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count)
raises(DOMException);
void appendData(in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
void insertData(in unsigned long offset,
in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
void deleteData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count)
raises(DOMException);
void replaceData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count,
in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
};
Attributes
data of type DOMString
The character data of the node that implements this
interface. The DOM implementation may not put arbitrary
limits on the amount of data that may be stored in a
CharacterData node. However, implementation limits may mean
that the entirety of a node's data may not fit into a single
DOMString. In such cases, the user may call substringData to
retrieve the data in appropriately sized pieces.
When the CharacterData is a Text, or a CDATASection, this
attribute contains the property [character code] defined in
[XML Information set]. When the CharacterData is a Comment,
this attribute contains the property [content] defined by the
Comment Information Item in [XML Information set].
Exceptions on setting
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the
node is readonly.
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return
more characters than fit in a DOMString
variable on the implementation platform.
length of type unsigned long, readonly
The number of 16-bit units that are available through data
and the substringData method below. This may have the value
zero, i.e., CharacterData nodes may be empty.
Methods
appendData
Append the string to the end of the character data of the
node. Upon success, data provides access to the concatenation
of data and the DOMString specified.
Parameters
arg of type DOMString
The DOMString to append.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
deleteData
Remove a range of 16-bit units from the node. Upon success,
data and length reflect the change.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The offset from which to start removing.
count of type unsigned long
The number of 16-bit units to delete. If the sum of
offset and count exceeds length then all 16-bit units
from offset to the end of the data are deleted.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data, or if the specified count
is negative.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
insertData
Insert a string at the specified 16-bit unit offset.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The character offset at which to insert.
arg of type DOMString
The DOMString to insert.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
replaceData
Replace the characters starting at the specified 16-bit unit
offset with the specified string.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The offset from which to start replacing.
count of type unsigned long
The number of 16-bit units to replace. If the sum of
offset and count exceeds length, then all 16-bit units
to the end of the data are replaced; (i.e., the effect
is the same as a remove method call with the same range,
followed by an append method invocation).
arg of type DOMString
The DOMString with which the range must be replaced.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data, or if the specified count
is negative.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
substringData
Extracts a range of data from the node.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
Start offset of substring to extract.
count of type unsigned long
The number of 16-bit units to extract.
Return Value
DOMString The specified substring. If the sum of offset and
count exceeds the length, then all 16-bit units to
the end of the data are returned.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data, or if the specified count
is negative.
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified
range of text does not fit into a DOMString.
Interface Attr
The Attr interface represents an attribute in an Element object.
Typically the allowable values for the attribute are defined in a
document type definition.
Attr objects inherit the Node interface, but since they are not
actually child nodes of the element they describe, the DOM does not
consider them part of the document tree. Thus, the Node attributes
parentNode, previousSibling, and nextSibling have a null value for Attr
objects. The DOM takes the view that attributes are properties of
elements rather than having a separate identity from the elements they
are associated with; this should make it more efficient to implement
such features as default attributes associated with all elements of a
given type. Furthermore, Attr nodes may not be immediate children of a
DocumentFragment. However, they can be associated with Element nodes
contained within a DocumentFragment. In short, users and implementors
of the DOM need to be aware that Attr nodes have some things in common
with other objects inheriting the Node interface, but they also are
quite distinct.
The attribute's effective value is determined as follows: if this
attribute has been explicitly assigned any value, that value is the
attribute's effective value; otherwise, if there is a declaration for
this attribute, and that declaration includes a default value, then
that default value is the attribute's effective value; otherwise, the
attribute does not exist on this element in the structure model until
it has been explicitly added. Note that the nodeValue attribute on the
Attr instance can also be used to retrieve the string version of the
attribute's value(s).
In XML, where the value of an attribute can contain entity references,
the child nodes of the Attr node may be either Text or EntityReference
nodes (when these are in use; see the description of EntityReference
for discussion). Because the DOM Core is not aware of attribute types,
it treats all attribute values as simple strings, even if the DTD or
schema declares them as having tokenized types.
The DOM implementation does not perform any attribute value
normalization. While it is expected that the value and nodeValue
attributes of an Attr node initially return the normalized value, this
may not be the case after mutation. This is true, independently of
whether the mutation is performed by setting the string value directly
or by changing the Attr child nodes. In particular, this is true when
character entity references are involved, given that they are not
represented in the DOM and they impact attribute value normalization.
Note: The properties [attribute type] and [references] defined in [XML
Information set] are not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core. However,
[DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save] does provide a way to
access the property [attribute type].
IDL Definition
interface Attr : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString name;
readonly attribute boolean specified;
attribute DOMString value;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute Element ownerElement;
};
Attributes
name of type DOMString, readonly
Returns the name of this attribute.
ownerElement of type Element, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The Element node this attribute is attached to or null if
this attribute is not in use.
This attribute represents the property [owner element]
defined in [XML Information set].
specified of type boolean, readonly
If this attribute was explicitly given a value in the
original document, this is true; otherwise, it is false. Note
that the implementation is in charge of this attribute, not
the user. If the user changes the value of the attribute
(even if it ends up having the same value as the default
value) then the specified flag is automatically flipped to
true. To re-specify the attribute as the default value from
the DTD, the user must delete the attribute. The
implementation will then make a new attribute available with
specified set to false and the default value (if one exists).
In summary:
+ If the attribute has an assigned value in the document
then specified is true, and the value is the assigned
value.
+ If the attribute has no assigned value in the document
and has a default value in the DTD, then specified is
false, and the value is the default value in the DTD.
+ If the attribute has no assigned value in the document
and has a value of #IMPLIED in the DTD, then the
attribute does not appear in the structure model of the
document.
+ If the ownerElement attribute is null (i.e. because it
was just created or was set to null by the various
removal and cloning operations) specified is true.
This attribute represents the property [specified] defined
[XML Information set].
value of type DOMString
On retrieval, the value of the attribute is returned as a
string. Character and general entity references are replaced
with their values. See also the method getAttribute on the
Element interface.
On setting, this creates a Text node with the unparsed
contents of the string. I.e. any characters that an XML
processor would recognize as markup are instead treated as
literal text. See also the method setAttribute on the Element
interface.
If the value does contain the normalized attribute value,
this attribute represents the property [normalized value]
defined in [XML Information set].
Exceptions on setting
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the
node is readonly.
Interface Element
The Element interface represents an element in an HTML or XML document.
Elements may have attributes associated with them; since the Element
interface inherits from Node, the generic Node interface attribute
attributes may be used to retrieve the set of all attributes for an
element. There are methods on the Element interface to retrieve either
an Attr object by name or an attribute value by name. In XML, where an
attribute value may contain entity references, an Attr object should be
retrieved to examine the possibly fairly complex sub-tree representing
the attribute value. On the other hand, in HTML, where all attributes
have simple string values, methods to directly access an attribute
value can safely be used as a convenience.
Note: In DOM Level 2, the method normalize is inherited from the Node
interface where it was moved.
Note: The properties [namespace attributes] and [in-scope namespaces]
defined in [XML Information set] are not accessible from DOM Level 3
Core. However, [DOM Level 3 XPath] does provide a way to access the
property [in-scope namespaces].
IDL Definition
interface Element : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString tagName;
DOMString getAttribute(in DOMString name);
void setAttribute(in DOMString name,
in DOMString value)
raises(DOMException);
void removeAttribute(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
Attr getAttributeNode(in DOMString name);
Attr setAttributeNode(in Attr newAttr)
raises(DOMException);
Attr removeAttributeNode(in Attr oldAttr)
raises(DOMException);
NodeList getElementsByTagName(in DOMString name);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
DOMString getAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
void setAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName,
in DOMString value)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
void removeAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Attr getAttributeNodeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Attr setAttributeNodeNS(in Attr newAttr)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean hasAttribute(in DOMString name);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean hasAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
};
Attributes
tagName of type DOMString, readonly
The name of the element. For example, in:
<elementExample id="demo">
...
</elementExample> ,
tagName has the value "elementExample". Note that this is
case-preserving in XML, as are all of the operations of the
DOM. The HTML DOM returns the tagName of an HTML element in
the canonical uppercase form, regardless of the case in the
source HTML document.
Methods
getAttribute
Retrieves an attribute value by name.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value
DOMString The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if
that attribute does not have a specified or
default value.
No Exceptions
getAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Retrieves an attribute value by local name and namespace URI.
Documents which do not support the "XML" feature will permit
only the DOM Level 1 calls for creating/setting elements and
attributes. Hence, if you specify a non-null namespace URI,
these DOMs will never find a matching node.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to retrieve.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value
DOMString The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if
that attribute does not have a specified or
default value.
No Exceptions
getAttributeNode
Retrieves an attribute node by name.
To retrieve an attribute node by qualified name and namespace
URI, use the getAttributeNodeNS method.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name (nodeName) of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value
Attr The Attr node with the specified name (nodeName) or
null if there is no such attribute.
No Exceptions
getAttributeNodeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Retrieves an Attr node by local name and namespace URI.
Documents which do not support the "XML" feature will permit
only the DOM Level 1 calls for creating/setting elements and
attributes. Hence, if you specify a non-null namespace URI,
these DOMs will never find a matching node.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to retrieve.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value
Attr The Attr node with the specified attribute local name
and namespace URI or null if there is no such
attribute.
No Exceptions
getElementsByTagName
Returns a NodeList of all descendant Elements with a given
tag name, in document order.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*"
matches all tags.
Return Value
NodeList A list of matching Element nodes.
No Exceptions
getElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns a NodeList of all the descendant Elements with a
given local name and namespace URI in document order.
Documents which do not support the "XML" feature will permit
only the DOM Level 1 calls for creating/setting elements and
attributes. Hence, if you specify a non-null namespace URI,
these DOMs will never find a matching node.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The
special value "*" matches all namespaces.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the elements to match on. The special
value "*" matches all local names.
Return Value
NodeList A new NodeList object containing all the matched
Elements.
No Exceptions
hasAttribute introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns true when an attribute with a given name is specified
on this element or has a default value, false otherwise.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the attribute to look for.
Return Value
boolean true if an attribute with the given name is
specified on this element or has a default value,
false otherwise.
No Exceptions
hasAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns true when an attribute with a given local name and
namespace URI is specified on this element or has a default
value, false otherwise.
Documents which do not support the "XML" feature will permit
only the DOM Level 1 calls for creating/setting elements and
attributes. Hence, if you specify a non-null namespace URI,
these DOMs will never find a matching node.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to look for.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the attribute to look for.
Return Value
boolean true if an attribute with the given local name and
namespace URI is specified or has a default value on
this element, false otherwise.
No Exceptions
removeAttribute
Removes an attribute by name. If the removed attribute is
known to have a default value, an attribute immediately
appears containing the default value as well as the
corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when
applicable. If the attribute does not have a specified or
default value, calling this method has no effect.
To remove an attribute by local name and namespace URI, use
the removeAttributeNS method.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the attribute to remove.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
removeAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Removes an attribute by local name and namespace URI. If the
removed attribute has a default value it is immediately
replaced. The replacing attribute has the same namespace URI
and local name, as well as the original prefix. If the
attribute does not have a specified or default value, calling
this method has no effect.
Documents which do not support the "XML" feature will permit
only the DOM Level 1 calls for creating/setting elements and
attributes. Hence, if you specify a non-null namespace URI,
these DOMs will never find a matching node.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to remove.
localName of type DOMString
The local name of the attribute to remove.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
removeAttributeNode
Removes the specified attribute node. If the removed Attr has
a default value it is immediately replaced. The replacing
attribute has the same namespace URI and local name, as well
as the original prefix, when applicable.
Parameters
oldAttr of type Attr
The Attr node to remove from the attribute list.
Return Value
Attr The Attr node that was removed.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldAttr is not an
attribute of the element.
setAttribute
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that name is
already present in the element, its value is changed to be
that of the value parameter. This value is a simple string;
it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as
syntax to be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as
literal text, and needs to be appropriately escaped by the
implementation when it is written out. In order to assign an
attribute value that contains entity references, the user
must create an Attr node plus any Text and EntityReference
nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use
setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.
To set an attribute with a qualified name and namespace URI,
use the setAttributeNS method.
Parameters
name of type DOMString
The name of the attribute to create or alter.
value of type DOMString
Value to set in string form.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
name contains an illegal character.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
No Return Value
setAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with the same local
name and namespace URI is already present on the element, its
prefix is changed to be the prefix part of the qualifiedName,
and its value is changed to be the value parameter. This
value is a simple string; it is not parsed as it is being
set. So any markup (such as syntax to be recognized as an
entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be
appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is
written out. In order to assign an attribute value that
contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node
plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the
appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNodeNS or
setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
namespaceURI of type DOMString
The namespace URI of the attribute to create or alter.
qualifiedName of type DOMString
The qualified name of the attribute to create or alter.
value of type DOMString
The value to set in string form.
Exceptions
DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified
qualified name contains an illegal character,
per the XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0].
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is
malformed per the Namespaces in XML
specification, if the qualifiedName has a
prefix and the namespaceURI is null, if the
qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and
the namespaceURI is different from
"http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", or if
the qualifiedName, or its prefix, is "xmlns"
and the namespaceURI is different from
"http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/".
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Always thrown if the current
document does not support the "XML" feature,
since namespaces were defined by XML.
No Return Value
setAttributeNode
Adds a new attribute node. If an attribute with that name
(nodeName) is already present in the element, it is replaced
by the new one.
To add a new attribute node with a qualified name and
namespace URI, use the setAttributeNodeNS method.
Parameters
newAttr of type Attr
The Attr node to add to the attribute list.
Return Value
Attr If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing
attribute, the replaced Attr node is returned,
otherwise null is returned.
Exceptions
DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newAttr was
created from a different document than the one
that created the element.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if newAttr is
already an attribute of another Element object.
The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes
to re-use them in other elements.
setAttributeNodeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that local name
and that namespace URI is already present in the element, it
is replaced by the new one.
Per [XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as
the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have
no namespace.
Parameters
newAttr of type Attr
The Attr node to add to the attribute list.
Return Value
Attr If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute
with the same local name and namespace URI, the
replaced Attr node is returned, otherwise null is
returned.
Exceptions
DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newAttr was
created from a different document than the one
that created the element.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if newAttr is
already an attribute of another Element object.
The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes
to re-use them in other elements.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Always thrown if the current
document does not support the "XML" feature,
since namespaces were defined by XML.
Interface Text
The Text interface inherits from CharacterData and represents the
textual content (termed character data in XML) of an Element or Attr.
If there is no markup inside an element's content, the text is
contained in a single object implementing the Text interface that is
the only child of the element. If there is markup, it is parsed into
the information items (elements, comments, etc.) and Text nodes that
form the list of children of the element.
When a document is first made available via the DOM, there is only one
Text node for each block of text. Users may create adjacent Text nodes
that represent the contents of a given element without any intervening
markup, but should be aware that there is no way to represent the
separations between these nodes in XML or HTML, so they will not (in
general) persist between DOM editing sessions. The normalize method on
Node merges any such adjacent Text objects into a single node for each
block of text.
IDL Definition
interface Text : CharacterData {
Text splitText(in unsigned long offset)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
readonly attribute boolean isWhitespaceInElementContent;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
readonly attribute DOMString wholeText;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
Text replaceWholeText(in DOMString content)
raises(DOMException);
};
Attributes
isWhitespaceInElementContent of type boolean, readonly, introduced
in DOM Level 3
Returns whether this text node contains whitespace in element
content, often abusively called "ignorable whitespace".
Note: An implementation can only return true if, one way or
another, it has access to the relevant information (e.g., the
DTD or schema).
This attribute represents the property [element content
whitespace] defined in [XML Information set].
wholeText of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
Returns all text of Text nodes logically-adjacent text nodes
to this node, concatenated in document order.
Methods
replaceWholeText introduced in DOM Level 3
Substitutes the a specified text for the text of the current
node and all logically-adjacent text nodes.
This method returns the node in the hierarchy which received
the replacement text, which is null if the text was empty or
is the current node if the current node is not read-only or
otherwise is a new node of the same type as the current node
inserted at the site of the replacement. All
logically-adjacent text nodes are removed including the
current node unless it was the recipient of the replacement
text.
Where the nodes to be removed are read-only descendants of an
EntityReference, the EntityReference must be removed instead
of the read-only nodes. If any EntityReference to be removed
has descendants that are not EntityReference, Text, or
CDATASection nodes, the replaceWholeText method must fail
before performing any modification of the document, raising a
DOMException with the code NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR.
Parameters
content of type DOMString
The content of the replacing Text node.
Return Value
Text The Text node created with the specified content.
Exceptions
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if one of
the Text nodes being replaced is readonly.
splitText
Breaks this node into two nodes at the specified offset,
keeping both in the tree as siblings. After being split, this
node will contain all the content up to the offset point. A
new node of the same type, which contains all the content at
and after the offset point, is returned. If the original node
had a parent node, the new node is inserted as the next
sibling of the original node. When the offset is equal to the
length of this node, the new node has no data.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The 16-bit unit offset at which to split, starting from
0.
Return Value
Text The new node, of the same type as this node.
Exceptions
DOMException INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset
is negative or greater than the number of
16-bit units in data.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this
node is readonly.
Interface Comment
This interface inherits from CharacterData and represents the content
of a comment, i.e., all the characters between the starting '<!--' and
ending '-->'. Note that this is the definition of a comment in XML,
and, in practice, HTML, although some HTML tools may implement the full
SGML comment structure.
IDL Definition
interface Comment : CharacterData {
};
Interface UserDataHandler
When associating an object to a key on a node using setUserData the
application can provide a handler that gets called when the node the
object is associated to is being cloned or imported. This can be used
by the application to implement various behaviors regarding the data it
associates to the DOM nodes. This interface defines that handler.
IDL Definition
interface UserDataHandler {
// OperationType
const unsigned short NODE_CLONED = 1;
const unsigned short NODE_IMPORTED = 2;
const unsigned short NODE_DELETED = 3;
const unsigned short NODE_RENAMED = 4;
void handle(in unsigned short operation,
in DOMString key,
in DOMObject data,
in Node src,
in Node dst);
};
Definition group OperationType
An integer indicating the type of operation being performed on a
node.
Defined Constants
NODE_CLONED
The node is cloned.
NODE_DELETED
The node is deleted.
NODE_IMPORTED
The node is imported.
NODE_RENAMED
The node is renamed.
Methods
handle
This method is called whenever the node for which this
handler is registered is imported or cloned.
Parameters
operation of type unsigned short
Specifies the type of operation that is being performed
on the node.
key of type DOMString
Specifies the key for which this handler is being
called.
data of type DOMObject
Specifies the data for which this handler is being
called.
src of type Node
Specifies the node being cloned, imported, or renamed.
This is null when the node is being deleted.
dst of type Node
Specifies the node newly created if any, or null.
No Return Value
No Exceptions
Interface DOMError
DOMError is an interface that describes an error.
IDL Definition
interface DOMError {
const unsigned short SEVERITY_WARNING = 0;
const unsigned short SEVERITY_ERROR = 1;
const unsigned short SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR = 2;
readonly attribute unsigned short severity;
readonly attribute DOMString message;
readonly attribute Object relatedException;
readonly attribute DOMLocator location;
};
Constant SEVERITY_WARNING
The severity of the error described by the DOMError is warning
Constant SEVERITY_ERROR
The severity of the error described by the DOMError is error
Constant SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR
The severity of the error described by the DOMError is fatal error
Attributes
location of type DOMLocator, readonly
The location of the error.
message of type DOMString, readonly
An implementation specific string describing the error that
occured.
relatedException of type Object, readonly
The related platform dependent exception if any.
Issue Error-1:
exception is a reserved word, we need to rename it.
Resolution: Change to "relatedException". (F2F 26 Sep
2001)
severity of type unsigned short, readonly
The severity of the error, either SEVERITY_WARNING,
SEVERITY_ERROR, or SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR.
Interface DOMErrorHandler
DOMErrorHandler is a callback interface that the DOM implementation can
call when reporting errors that happens while processing XML data, or
when doing some other processing (e.g. validating a document).
The application that is using the DOM implementation is expected to
implement this interface.
Issue ErrorHandler-1:
How does one register an error handler in the core? Passed as an
argument to super-duper-normalize or registered on the
DOMImplementation?
IDL Definition
interface DOMErrorHandler {
boolean handleError(in DOMError error);
};
Methods
handleError
This method is called on the error handler when an error
occures.
Parameters
error of type DOMError
The error object that describes the error, this object
may be reused by the DOM implementation across multiple
calls to the handleEvent method.
Return Value
boolean If the handleError method returns true the DOM
implementation should continue as if the error
didn't happen when possible, if the method returns
false then the DOM implementation should stop the
current processing when possible.
No Exceptions
Interface DOMLocator
DOMLocator is an interface that describes a location (e.g. where an
error occured).
IDL Definition
interface DOMLocator {
readonly attribute long lineNumber;
readonly attribute long columnNumber;
readonly attribute long offset;
readonly attribute Node errorNode;
readonly attribute DOMString uri;
};
Attributes
columnNumber of type long, readonly
The column number where the error occured, or -1 if there is
no column number available.
errorNode of type Node, readonly
The DOM Node where the error occured, or null if there is no
Node available.
lineNumber of type long, readonly
The line number where the error occured, or -1 if there is no
line number available.
offset of type long, readonly
The byte or character offset into the input source, if we're
parsing a file or a byte stream then this will be the byte
offset into that stream, but if a character media is parsed
then the offset will be the character offset. The value is -1
if there is no offset available.
uri of type DOMString, readonly
The URI where the error occured, or null if there is no URI
available.
1.3. Extended Interfaces
The interfaces defined here form part of the DOM Core specification, but
objects that expose these interfaces will never be encountered in a DOM
implementation that deals only with HTML.
The interfaces found within this section are not mandatory. A DOM
application may use the hasFeature(feature, version) method of the
DOMImplementation interface with parameter values "XML" and "3.0"
(respectively) to determine whether or not this module is supported by the
implementation. In order to fully support this module, an implementation
must also support the "Core" feature defined in Fundamental Interfaces.
Please refer to additional information about Conformance in this
specification. The DOM Level 3 XML module is backward compatible with the
DOM Level 2 XML [DOM Level 2 Core] and DOM Level 1 XML [DOM Level 1]
modules, i.e. a DOM Level 3 XML implementation who returns true for "XML"
with the version number "3.0" must also return true for this feature when
the version number is "2.0", "1.0", "" or, null.
Interface CDATASection
CDATA sections are used to escape blocks of text containing characters
that would otherwise be regarded as markup. The only delimiter that is
recognized in a CDATA section is the "]]>" string that ends the CDATA
section. CDATA sections cannot be nested. Their primary purpose is for
including material such as XML fragments, without needing to escape all
the delimiters.
The DOMString attribute of the Text node holds the text that is
contained by the CDATA section. Note that this may contain characters
that need to be escaped outside of CDATA sections and that, depending
on the character encoding ("charset") chosen for serialization, it may
be impossible to write out some characters as part of a CDATA section.
The CDATASection interface inherits from the CharacterData interface
through the Text interface. Adjacent CDATASection nodes are not merged
by use of the normalize method of the Node interface.
Note: Because no markup is recognized within a CDATASection, character
numeric references cannot be used as an escape mechanism when
serializing. Therefore, action needs to be taken when serializing a
CDATASection with a character encoding where some of the contained
characters cannot be represented. Failure to do so would not produce
well-formed XML.
One potential solution in the serialization process is to end the CDATA
section before the character, output the character using a character
reference or entity reference, and open a new CDATA section for any
further characters in the text node. Note, however, that some code
conversion libraries at the time of writing do not return an error or
exception when a character is missing from the encoding, making the
task of ensuring that data is not corrupted on serialization more
difficult.
IDL Definition
interface CDATASection : Text {
};
Interface DocumentType
Each Document has a doctype attribute whose value is either null or a
DocumentType object. The DocumentType interface in the DOM Core
provides an interface to the list of entities that are defined for the
document, and little else because the effect of namespaces and the
various XML schema efforts on DTD representation are not clearly
understood as of this writing.
The DOM Level 2 doesn't support editing DocumentType nodes.
Note: The property [children] defined by the Document Type Declaration
Information Item in [XML Information set] is not accessible from DOM
Level 3 Core.
IDL Definition
interface DocumentType : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString name;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap entities;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap notations;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString internalSubset;
};
Attributes
entities of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
A NamedNodeMap containing the general entities, both external
and internal, declared in the DTD. Parameter entities are not
contained. Duplicates are discarded. For example in:
<!DOCTYPE ex SYSTEM "ex.dtd" [
<!ENTITY foo "foo">
<!ENTITY bar "bar">
<!ENTITY bar "bar2">
<!ENTITY % baz "baz">
]>
<ex/>
the interface provides access to foo and the first
declaration of bar but not the second declaration of bar or
baz. Every node in this map also implements the Entity
interface.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing entities, therefore
entities cannot be altered in any way.
internalSubset of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM
Level 2
The internal subset as a string, or null if there is none.
This is does not contain the delimiting square brackets.
Note: The actual content returned depends on how much
information is available to the implementation. This may vary
depending on various parameters, including the XML processor
used to build the document.
name of type DOMString, readonly
The name of DTD; i.e., the name immediately following the
DOCTYPE keyword.
notations of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
A NamedNodeMap containing the notations declared in the DTD.
Duplicates are discarded. Every node in this map also
implements the Notation interface.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing notations, therefore
notations cannot be altered in any way.
This attribute represents the property [notations] defined by
the Document Information Item in [XML Information set].
publicId of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The public identifier of the external subset.
This attribute represents the property [public identifier]
defined by the Document Type Declaration Information Item in
[XML Information set].
systemId of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
The system identifier of the external subset. This may be an
absolute URI or not.
This attribute represents the property [system identifier]
defined by the Document Type Declaration Information Item in
[XML Information set].
Interface Notation
This interface represents a notation declared in the DTD. A notation
either declares, by name, the format of an unparsed entity (see section
4.7 of the XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0]), or is used for formal
declaration of processing instruction targets (see section 2.6 of the
XML 1.0 specification [XML 1.0]). The nodeName attribute inherited from
Node is set to the declared name of the notation.
The DOM Level 1 does not support editing Notation nodes; they are
therefore readonly.
A Notation node does not have any parent.
Issue Notation-1:
adds a namespaceURI for notations?
Resolution: No. 1- notations are attached to a DocumentType. 2-
what would be the key for notations in namednodemap?
IDL Definition
interface Notation : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
};
Attributes
publicId of type DOMString, readonly
The public identifier of this notation. If the public
identifier was not specified, this is null.
This attribute represents the property [public identifier]
defined by the Notation Information Item in [XML Information
set].
systemId of type DOMString, readonly
The system identifier of this notation. If the system
identifier was not specified, this is null. This may be an
absolute URI or not.
This attribute represents the property [system identifier]
defined by the Notation Information Item in [XML Information
set].
Interface Entity
This interface represents an entity, either parsed or unparsed, in an
XML document. Note that this models the entity itself not the entity
declaration. Entity declaration modeling has been left for a later
Level of the DOM specification.
The nodeName attribute that is inherited from Node contains the name of
the entity.
An XML processor may choose to completely expand entities before the
structure model is passed to the DOM; in this case there will be no
EntityReference nodes in the document tree.
XML does not mandate that a non-validating XML processor read and
process entity declarations made in the external subset or declared in
external parameter entities. This means that parsed entities declared
in the external subset need not be expanded by some classes of
applications, and that the replacement text of the entity may not be
available. When the replacement text is available, the corresponding
Entity node's child list represents the structure of that replacement
value. Otherwise, the child list is empty.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing Entity nodes; if a user wants
to make changes to the contents of an Entity, every related
EntityReference node has to be replaced in the structure model by a
clone of the Entity's contents, and then the desired changes must be
made to each of those clones instead. Entity nodes and all their
descendants are readonly.
An Entity node does not have any parent.
Note: If the entity contains an unbound namespace prefix, the
namespaceURI of the corresponding node in the Entity node subtree is
null. The same is true for EntityReference nodes that refer to this
entity, when they are created using the createEntityReference method of
the Document interface. The DOM Level 2 does not support any mechanism
to resolve namespace prefixes.
Note: The properties [notation name] and [notation] defined in [XML
Information set] are not accessible from DOM Level 3 Core. However,
[DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save] does provide a way to
access them.
IDL Definition
interface Entity : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
readonly attribute DOMString notationName;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString actualEncoding;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString encoding;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString version;
};
Attributes
actualEncoding of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying the actual encoding of this entity,
when it is an external parsed entity. This is null otherwise.
encoding of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the
encoding of this entity, when it is an external parsed
entity. This is null otherwise.
notationName of type DOMString, readonly
For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the
entity. For parsed entities, this is null.
publicId of type DOMString, readonly
The public identifier associated with the entity if
specified, and null otherwise.
This attribute represents the property [public identifier]
defined by the Unparsed Entity Information Item in [XML
Information set].
systemId of type DOMString, readonly
The system identifier associated with the entity if
specified, and null otherwise. This may be an absolute URI or
not.
This attribute represents the property [system identifier]
defined by the Unparsed Entity Information Item in [XML
Information set].
version of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the
version number of this entity, when it is an external parsed
entity. This is null otherwise.
Interface EntityReference
EntityReference objects may be inserted into the structure model when
an entity reference is in the source document, or when the user wishes
to insert an entity reference. Note that character references and
references to predefined entities are considered to be expanded by the
HTML or XML processor so that characters are represented by their
Unicode equivalent rather than by an entity reference. Moreover, the
XML processor may completely expand references to entities while
building the structure model, instead of providing EntityReference
objects. If it does provide such objects, then for a given
EntityReference node, it may be that there is no Entity node
representing the referenced entity. If such an Entity exists, then the
subtree of the EntityReference node is in general a copy of the Entity
node subtree. However, this may not be true when an entity contains an
unbound namespace prefix. In such a case, because the namespace prefix
resolution depends on where the entity reference is, the descendants of
the EntityReference node may be bound to different namespace URIs.
As for Entity nodes, EntityReference nodes and all their descendants
are readonly.
Note: The properties [system identifier] and [public identifier]
defined by the Unexpanded Entity Reference Information Item in [XML
Information set] are accessible through the Entity interface. The
property [all declarations processed] is not accessible through the DOM
API.
IDL Definition
interface EntityReference : Node {
};
Interface ProcessingInstruction
The ProcessingInstruction interface represents a "processing
instruction", used in XML as a way to keep processor-specific
information in the text of the document.
Note: The property [notation] defined in [XML Information set] is not
accessible from DOM Level 3 Core.
IDL Definition
interface ProcessingInstruction : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString target;
attribute DOMString data;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
};
Attributes
data of type DOMString
The content of this processing instruction. This is from the
first non white space character after the target to the
character immediately preceding the ?>.
This attribute represents the property [content] defined by
the Processing Instruction Information Item in [XML
Information set].
Exceptions on setting
DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the
node is readonly.
target of type DOMString, readonly
The target of this processing instruction. XML defines this
as being the first token following the markup that begins the
processing instruction.
This attribute represents the property [target] defined in
[XML Information set].
14 January 2002
Appendix A: Changes
Editors:
Arnaud Le Hors, IBM
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C
A.1: Changes between DOM Level 2 Core and DOM Level 3 Core
To be completed...
A.2: Changes between DOM Level 1 Core and DOM Level 2 Core
OMG IDL
The DOM Level 2 specifications are now using Corba 2.3.1 instead of
Corba 2.2.
Type DOMString
The definition of DOMString in IDL is now a valuetype.
A.2.1: Changes to DOM Level 1 Core interfaces and exceptions
Interface Attr
The Attr interface has one new attribute: ownerElement.
Interface Document
The Document interface has five new methods: importNode,
createElementNS, createAttributeNS, getElementsByTagNameNS and
getElementById.
Interface NamedNodeMap
The NamedNodeMap interface has three new methods: getNamedItemNS,
setNamedItemNS, removeNamedItemNS.
Interface Node
The Node interface has two new methods: isSupported and hasAttributes.
normalize, previously in the Element interface, has been moved in the
Node interface.
The Node interface has three new attributes: namespaceURI, prefix and
localName.
The ownerDocument attribute was specified to be null when the node is a
Document. It now is also null when the node is a DocumentType which is
not used with any Document yet.
Interface DocumentType
The DocumentType interface has three attributes: publicId, systemId and
internalSubset.
Interface DOMImplementation
The DOMImplementation interface has two new methods: createDocumentType
and createDocument.
Interface Element
The Element interface has eight new methods: getAttributeNS,
setAttributeNS, removeAttributeNS, getAttributeNodeNS,
setAttributeNodeNS, getElementsByTagNameNS, hasAttribute and
hasAttributeNS.
The method normalize is now inherited from the Node interface where it
was moved.
Exception DOMException
The DOMException has five new exception codes: INVALID_STATE_ERR,
SYNTAX_ERR, INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR, NAMESPACE_ERR and
INVALID_ACCESS_ERR.
A.2.2: New features
A.2.2.1: New types
DOMTimeStamp
The DOMTimeStamp type was added to the Core module.
14 January 2002
Appendix B: Namespaces Algorithms
Editor:
Arnaud Le Hors, IBM
B.1: Namespace normalization
Namespace declaration attributes and prefixes are normalized as part of the
normalizeDocument method of the Document interface as if the following
method described in pseudo code was called on the document element.
void Element.normalizeNamespaces()
{
if ( Element's namespaceURI != null )
{
if ( Element's prefix/namespace pair (or default namespace,
if no prefix) are within the scope of a binding )
{
==> do nothing, declaration in scope is inherited
See example 1
}
else
{
==> Create a local namespace declaration attr for this namespace,
with Element's current prefix (or a default namespace, if
no prefix). If there's a conflicting local declaration
already present, change its value to use this namespace.
See example 2
// NOTE that this may break other nodes within this Element's
// subtree, if they're already using this prefix.
// They will be repaired when we reach them.
}
}
else
{
// Element has no namespace URI:
if ( Element has a colon in its name )
{
if ( Level 2 node )
{
==> report an error
}
else
{
// Level 1 node
if ( Name is not a QName )
{
==> report an error
}
else
{
if ( Prefix is bound to something )
{
==> report a warning
}
else
{
==> report an error
}
}
}
}
else
{
// Element has no namespace URI
// Element has no pseudo-prefix
if ( default Namespace in scope is "no namespace" )
{
==> do nothing, we're fine as we stand
}
else
{
if ( there's a conflicting local default namespace declaration
already present )
{
==> change its value to use this empty namespace.
See example 3
}
else
{
==> Set the default namespace to "no namespace" by creating or
changing a local declaration attribute: xmlns="".
See example 4
}
// NOTE that this may break other nodes within this Element's
// subtree, if they're already using the default namespaces.
// They will be repaired when we reach them.
}
}
}
//////// EXAMINE AND POLISH THE ATTRS ////////
for ( all Attrs of Element )
{
if ( Attr[i] has a namespace URI )
{
if ( Attr has no prefix, or has a prefix that conflicts with
a binding already active in scope )
{
if ( Element is in the scope of a non default binding for this
namespace )
{
if ( one or more prefix bindings are available )
{
if ( one is locally defined )
{
==> pick that one.
}
else
{
==> pick one arbitrarily
}
==> Change the Attr to use that prefix.
}
else
{
==> Create a local namespace declaration attr for this namespace
with a prefix not already used in the current scope and following
the pattern "NS" + index (starting at 1).
Change the Attr to use this prefix.
// NOTE that this may break other nodes within this Element's
// subtree, if they're already using this prefix.
// They will be repaired when we reach them.
}
}
}
else
{
// prefix does match but....
if ( namespace is "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" AND attribute does
not have the prefix "xmlns:" or the nodeName "xmlns" )
{
// While all Namespace Declarations belong to a reserved NSURI,
// it is _not_ true that all attributes having that NSURI are to be
// considered Namespace Declarations.
// According to the namespace spec, only "xmlns" and names having
// the xmlns: prefix should be interpreted as declarations. So:
if ( there is a non default binding for this namespace in scope
with a prefix other than "xmlns" )
{
if ( one is locally defined )
{
==> pick that one.
}
else
{
==> pick one arbitrarily
}
==> Change the Attr to use that prefix.
}
else
{
==> Create a local namespace declaration attr for this namespace
with a prefix not already used in the current scope and following
the pattern "NS" + index (starting at 1).
Change the Attr to use this prefix.
// NOTE that this may break other nodes within thisElement's
// subtree, if they're already using this prefix.
// They will be repaired when we reach them.
}
// end non-namespace-decl with namespace-decl URI
}
}
// end namespaced Attr
}
else
{
// Attr[i] has no namespace URI
if ( Attr[i] has a colon in its name )
{
if ( Level 2 node )
{
==> report an error
}
else
{
// Level 1 node
if ( Name is not a QName )
{
==> report an error
}
else
{
if ( Prefix is bound to something )
{
==> report a warning
}
else
{
==> report an error
}
}
}
}
else
{
// attr has no namespace URI and no prefix
// we're fine as we stand, since attrs don't use default
==> do nothing
}
}
} // end for-all-Attrs
// do this recursively
for ( all child elements of Element )
{
childElement.normalizeNamespaces()
}
} // end Element.normalizeNamespaces
B.2: Namespace Prefix Lookup
The following describes in pseudo code the algorithm used in the
lookupNamespacePrefix method of the Node interface.
DOMString Element.lookupNamespacePrefix(in DOMString specifiedNamespaceURI)
{
if ( Element's namespaceURI == specifiedNamespaceURI )
{
return Element's prefix
}
else if ( Element has an Attr and
Attr's namespaceURI == "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and
Attr's prefix == "xmlns" and
Attr's value == specifiedNamespaceURI )
{
return Attr's localName.
}
else if ( Element has an ancestor Element )
// EntityReferences may have to be skipped to get to it
{
return ancestorElement.lookupNamespacePrefix(specifiedNamespaceURI)
}
else {
return unknown (null)
}
}
Issue lookupNamespacePrefixAlgo-1:
Isn't the name the opposite of what it stands for?
Issue lookupNamespacePrefixAlgo-2:
How does one differentiate the case where it's the default namespace
(prefix == null) from the case where the namespaceURI was not found?
Issue lookupNamespacePrefixAlgo-3:
How does one specify this is for an attribute and therefore the default
namespace is not applicable?
B.3: Namespace URI Lookup
The following describes in pseudo code the algorithm used in the
lookupNamespaceURI method of the Node interface.
DOMString Element.lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString specifiedPrefix)
{
return lookupNamespaceURI(specifiedPrefix, this);
}
DOMString Element.lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString specifiedPrefix, Element el)
{
if ( Element's namespace URI != null and
Element's prefix == specifiedPrefix and
el.lookupNamespacePrefix(Element's namespace URI) == specifiedPrefix )
{
return Element's namespace URI
}
else if ( Element has an Attr and
Attr's namespaceURI == "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and
Attr's prefix == "xmlns" and
Attr's localName == specifiedPrefix and
el.lookupNamespacePrefix(Attr's value URI) == specifiedPrefix )
{
return Attr's value.
}
else if ( Element has an ancestor Element )
// EntityReferences may have to be skipped to get to it
{
return ancestorElement.lookupNamespaceURI(specifiedPrefix, el)
}
else {
return unknown (null)
}
}
Issue lookupNamespaceURIAlgo-1:
How does one look for the default namespace?
14 January 2002
Appendix C: Accessing code point boundaries
Mark Davis, IBM
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc.
Table of contents
* 3.1. Introduction
* 3.2. Methods
o StringExtend
C.1: Introduction
This appendix is an informative, not a normative, part of the Level 2 DOM
specification.
Characters are represented in Unicode by numbers called code points (also
called scalar values). These numbers can range from 0 up to 1,114,111 =
10FFFF16 (although some of these values are illegal). Each code point can be
directly encoded with a 32-bit code unit. This encoding is termed UCS-4 (or
UTF-32). The DOM specification, however, uses UTF-16, in which the most
frequent characters (which have values less than FFFF16) are represented by
a single 16-bit code unit, while characters above FFFF16 use a special pair
of code units called a surrogate pair. For more information, see [Unicode
3.0] or the Unicode Web site.
While indexing by code points as opposed to code units is not common in
programs, some specifications such as XPath (and therefore XSLT and
XPointer) use code point indices. For interfacing with such formats it is
recommended that the programming language provide string processing methods
for converting code point indices to code unit indices and back. Some
languages do not provide these functions natively; for these it is
recommended that the native String type that is bound to DOMString be
extended to enable this conversion. An example of how such an API might look
is supplied below.
Note: Since these methods are supplied as an illustrative example of the
type of functionality that is required, the names of the methods,
exceptions, and interface may differ from those given here.
C.2: Methods
Interface StringExtend
Extensions to a language's native String class or interface
IDL Definition
interface StringExtend {
int findOffset16(in int offset32)
raises(StringIndexOutOfBoundsException);
int findOffset32(in int offset16)
raises(StringIndexOutOfBoundsException);
};
Methods
findOffset16
Returns the UTF-16 offset that corresponds to a UTF-32
offset. Used for random access.
Note: You can always round-trip from a UTF-32 offset to a
UTF-16 offset and back. You can round-trip from a UTF-16
offset to a UTF-32 offset and back if and only if the
offset16 is not in the middle of a surrogate pair. Unmatched
surrogates count as a single UTF-16 value.
Parameters
offset32 of type int
UTF-32 offset.
Return Value
int UTF-16 offset
Exceptions
StringIndexOutOfBoundsException if offset32 is out of
bounds.
findOffset32
Returns the UTF-32 offset corresponding to a UTF-16 offset.
Used for random access. To find the UTF-32 length of a
string, use:
len32 = findOffset32(source, source.length());
Note: If the UTF-16 offset is into the middle of a surrogate
pair, then the UTF-32 offset of the end of the pair is
returned; that is, the index of the char after the end of the
pair. You can always round-trip from a UTF-32 offset to a
UTF-16 offset and back. You can round-trip from a UTF-16
offset to a UTF-32 offset and back if and only if the
offset16 is not in the middle of a surrogate pair. Unmatched
surrogates count as a single UTF-16 value.
Parameters
offset16 of type int
UTF-16 offset
Return Value
int UTF-32 offset
Exceptions
StringIndexOutOfBoundsException if offset16 is out of
bounds.
14 January 2002
Appendix D: IDL Definitions
This appendix contains the complete OMG IDL [OMGIDL] for the Level 3
Document Object Model Core definitions.
The IDL files are also available as:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20020114/idl.zip
dom.idl:
// File: dom.idl
#ifndef _DOM_IDL_
#define _DOM_IDL_
#pragma prefix "w3c.org"
module dom
{
valuetype DOMString sequence<unsigned short>;
typedef unsigned long long DOMTimeStamp;
typedef Object DOMKeyObject;
typedef Object DOMObject;
interface DOMImplementation;
interface DocumentType;
interface Document;
interface NodeList;
interface NamedNodeMap;
interface UserDataHandler;
interface Element;
interface DOMLocator;
exception DOMException {
unsigned short code;
};
// ExceptionCode
const unsigned short INDEX_SIZE_ERR = 1;
const unsigned short DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR = 2;
const unsigned short HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR = 3;
const unsigned short WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR = 4;
const unsigned short INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR = 5;
const unsigned short NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR = 6;
const unsigned short NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR = 7;
const unsigned short NOT_FOUND_ERR = 8;
const unsigned short NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR = 9;
const unsigned short INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR = 10;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short INVALID_STATE_ERR = 11;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short SYNTAX_ERR = 12;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR = 13;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short NAMESPACE_ERR = 14;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
const unsigned short INVALID_ACCESS_ERR = 15;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
const unsigned short VALIDATION_ERR = 16;
interface DOMImplementationSource {
DOMImplementation getDOMImplementation(in DOMString features);
};
interface DOMImplementation {
boolean hasFeature(in DOMString feature,
in DOMString version);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
DocumentType createDocumentType(in DOMString qualifiedName,
in DOMString publicId,
in DOMString systemId)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Document createDocument(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName,
in DocumentType doctype)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMImplementation getInterface(in DOMString feature);
};
interface Node {
// NodeType
const unsigned short ELEMENT_NODE = 1;
const unsigned short ATTRIBUTE_NODE = 2;
const unsigned short TEXT_NODE = 3;
const unsigned short CDATA_SECTION_NODE = 4;
const unsigned short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE = 5;
const unsigned short ENTITY_NODE = 6;
const unsigned short PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE = 7;
const unsigned short COMMENT_NODE = 8;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_NODE = 9;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE = 10;
const unsigned short DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE = 11;
const unsigned short NOTATION_NODE = 12;
readonly attribute DOMString nodeName;
attribute DOMString nodeValue;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
readonly attribute unsigned short nodeType;
readonly attribute Node parentNode;
readonly attribute NodeList childNodes;
readonly attribute Node firstChild;
readonly attribute Node lastChild;
readonly attribute Node previousSibling;
readonly attribute Node nextSibling;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap attributes;
// Modified in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute Document ownerDocument;
// Modified in DOM Level 3:
Node insertBefore(in Node newChild,
in Node refChild)
raises(DOMException);
// Modified in DOM Level 3:
Node replaceChild(in Node newChild,
in Node oldChild)
raises(DOMException);
// Modified in DOM Level 3:
Node removeChild(in Node oldChild)
raises(DOMException);
Node appendChild(in Node newChild)
raises(DOMException);
boolean hasChildNodes();
Node cloneNode(in boolean deep);
// Modified in DOM Level 2:
void normalize();
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean isSupported(in DOMString feature,
in DOMString version);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString namespaceURI;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
attribute DOMString prefix;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString localName;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean hasAttributes();
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
readonly attribute DOMString baseURI;
// TreePosition
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING = 0x01;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING = 0x02;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR = 0x04;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT = 0x08;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT = 0x10;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE = 0x20;
const unsigned short TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED = 0x00;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
unsigned short compareTreePosition(in Node other);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString textContent;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
boolean isSameNode(in Node other);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMString lookupNamespacePrefix(in DOMString namespaceURI);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMString lookupNamespaceURI(in DOMString prefix);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
boolean isEqualNode(in Node arg,
in boolean deep);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
Node getInterface(in DOMString feature);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMKeyObject setUserData(in DOMString key,
in DOMKeyObject data,
in UserDataHandler handler);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
DOMKeyObject getUserData(in DOMString key);
};
interface NodeList {
Node item(in unsigned long index);
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
};
interface NamedNodeMap {
Node getNamedItem(in DOMString name);
Node setNamedItem(in Node arg)
raises(DOMException);
Node removeNamedItem(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
Node item(in unsigned long index);
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node getNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node setNamedItemNS(in Node arg)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node removeNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName)
raises(DOMException);
};
interface CharacterData : Node {
attribute DOMString data;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// raises(DOMException) on retrieval
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
DOMString substringData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count)
raises(DOMException);
void appendData(in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
void insertData(in unsigned long offset,
in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
void deleteData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count)
raises(DOMException);
void replaceData(in unsigned long offset,
in unsigned long count,
in DOMString arg)
raises(DOMException);
};
interface Attr : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString name;
readonly attribute boolean specified;
attribute DOMString value;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute Element ownerElement;
};
interface Element : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString tagName;
DOMString getAttribute(in DOMString name);
void setAttribute(in DOMString name,
in DOMString value)
raises(DOMException);
void removeAttribute(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
Attr getAttributeNode(in DOMString name);
Attr setAttributeNode(in Attr newAttr)
raises(DOMException);
Attr removeAttributeNode(in Attr oldAttr)
raises(DOMException);
NodeList getElementsByTagName(in DOMString name);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
DOMString getAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
void setAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName,
in DOMString value)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
void removeAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Attr getAttributeNodeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Attr setAttributeNodeNS(in Attr newAttr)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean hasAttribute(in DOMString name);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean hasAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
};
interface Text : CharacterData {
Text splitText(in unsigned long offset)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
readonly attribute boolean isWhitespaceInElementContent;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
readonly attribute DOMString wholeText;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
Text replaceWholeText(in DOMString content)
raises(DOMException);
};
interface Comment : CharacterData {
};
interface UserDataHandler {
// OperationType
const unsigned short NODE_CLONED = 1;
const unsigned short NODE_IMPORTED = 2;
const unsigned short NODE_DELETED = 3;
const unsigned short NODE_RENAMED = 4;
void handle(in unsigned short operation,
in DOMString key,
in DOMObject data,
in Node src,
in Node dst);
};
interface DOMError {
const unsigned short SEVERITY_WARNING = 0;
const unsigned short SEVERITY_ERROR = 1;
const unsigned short SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR = 2;
readonly attribute unsigned short severity;
readonly attribute DOMString message;
readonly attribute Object relatedException;
readonly attribute DOMLocator location;
};
interface DOMErrorHandler {
boolean handleError(in DOMError error);
};
interface DOMLocator {
readonly attribute long lineNumber;
readonly attribute long columnNumber;
readonly attribute long offset;
readonly attribute Node errorNode;
readonly attribute DOMString uri;
};
interface CDATASection : Text {
};
interface DocumentType : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString name;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap entities;
readonly attribute NamedNodeMap notations;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
readonly attribute DOMString internalSubset;
};
interface Notation : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
};
interface Entity : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString publicId;
readonly attribute DOMString systemId;
readonly attribute DOMString notationName;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString actualEncoding;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString encoding;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString version;
};
interface EntityReference : Node {
};
interface ProcessingInstruction : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString target;
attribute DOMString data;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
};
interface DocumentFragment : Node {
};
interface Document : Node {
// Modified in DOM Level 3:
readonly attribute DocumentType doctype;
readonly attribute DOMImplementation implementation;
readonly attribute Element documentElement;
Element createElement(in DOMString tagName)
raises(DOMException);
DocumentFragment createDocumentFragment();
Text createTextNode(in DOMString data);
Comment createComment(in DOMString data);
CDATASection createCDATASection(in DOMString data)
raises(DOMException);
ProcessingInstruction createProcessingInstruction(in DOMString target,
in DOMString data)
raises(DOMException);
Attr createAttribute(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
EntityReference createEntityReference(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
NodeList getElementsByTagName(in DOMString tagname);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Node importNode(in Node importedNode,
in boolean deep)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Element createElementNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Attr createAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString qualifiedName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
Element getElementById(in DOMString elementId);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString actualEncoding;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString encoding;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute boolean standalone;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString version;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute boolean strictErrorChecking;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMErrorHandler errorHandler;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
attribute DOMString documentURI;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
Node adoptNode(in Node source)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
void normalizeDocument();
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
boolean canSetNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name,
in boolean state);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
void setNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name,
in boolean state)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
boolean getNormalizationFeature(in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
Node renameNode(in Node n,
in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString name)
raises(DOMException);
};
};
#endif // _DOM_IDL_
14 January 2002
Appendix E: Java Language Binding
This appendix contains the complete Java [Java] bindings for the Level 3
Document Object Model Core.
The Java files are also available as
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-Core-20020114/java-binding.zip
E.1: Java Binding Extension
This section defines the DOMImplementationRegistry object, discussed in
Bootstrapping, for Java.
The DOMImplementationRegistry is first initialized by the application or the
implementation, depending on the context, through the Java system property
"org.w3c.dom.DOMImplementationSourceList". The value of this property is a
space separated list of names of available classes implementing the
DOMImplementationSource interface.
org/w3c/dom/DOMImplementationRegistry.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
import java.util.StringTokenizer;
import java.util.Vector;
/**
* This class holds the list of registered DOMImplementations. It is first
* initialized based on the content of the space separated list of classnames
* contained in the System Property "org.w3c.dom.DOMImplementationSourceList".
*
* <p>Subsequently, additional sources can be registered and implementations
* can be queried based on a list of requested features.
*
* <p>This provides an application with an implementation independent starting
* point.
*
* @see DOMImplementation
* @see DOMImplementationSource
*/
public class DOMImplementationRegistry
{
// The system property to specify the DOMImplementationSource class names.
public static String PROPERTY = "org.w3c.dom.DOMImplementationSourceList";
private static Vector sources = new Vector();
private static boolean initialized = false;
private static void initialize() throws ClassNotFoundException,
InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException
{
initialized = true;
String p = System.getProperty(PROPERTY);
if (p == null) {
return;
}
StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(p);
while (st.hasMoreTokens()) {
Object source = Class.forName(st.nextToken()).newInstance();
sources.addElement(source);
}
}
/**
* Return the first registered implementation that has the desired features,
* or null if none is found.
*
* @param features A string that specifies which features are required.
* This is a space separated list in which each feature is
* specified by its name optionally followed by a space
* and a version number.
* This is something like: "XML 1.0 Traversal Events 2.0"
* @return An implementation that has the desired features, or
* <code>null</code> if this source has none.
*/
public static DOMImplementation getDOMImplementation(String features)
throws ClassNotFoundException,
InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException
{
if (!initialized) {
initialize();
}
int len = sources.size();
for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
DOMImplementationSource source =
(DOMImplementationSource) sources.elementAt(i);
DOMImplementation impl = source.getDOMImplementation(features);
if (impl != null) {
return impl;
}
}
return null;
}
/**
* Register an implementation.
*/
public static void addSource(DOMImplementationSource s)
throws ClassNotFoundException,
InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException
{
if (!initialized) {
initialize();
}
sources.addElement(s);
// update system property accordingly
StringBuffer b = new StringBuffer(System.getProperty(PROPERTY));
b.append(" " + s.getClass().getName());
System.setProperty(PROPERTY, b.toString());
}
}
With this, the first line of an application typically becomes something like
(modulo exception handling):
DOMImplementation impl = DOMImplementationRegistry.getDOMImplementation("XML 1.0");
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-1:
Should this provides for handling more than one implementation at a
time?
Resolution: Yes.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-2:
Should this be even simpler and force the implementation to provide
this class (and not necessarily rely on any system property)?
Resolution: No.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-3:
This requires all DOMImplementationSources to be pre-instantiated.
Resolution: Proposed: It's ok.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-4:
Some people may like to be able to enumerate available implementations.
DOMImplementation objects may be too dynamic to enumerate. We should
explore any significant use case that cannot be solved by this
proposal.
Resolution: No real need. Additional features can be used to further
differentiate implementations.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-5:
A space-separated feature string may not be the optimal way to pass a
feature list. It was motivated by the lack of an array construct.
Resolution: Proposed: It's ok.
Issue Level-3-Java-Bootstrap-6:
Should "*" given as the version number be interpreted as "any version".
hasFeature() does not allow this, it requires a specific version to be
given.
Resolution: No. (telcon xxxx)
E.2: Other Core interfaces
org/w3c/dom/DOMException.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public class DOMException extends RuntimeException {
public DOMException(short code, String message) {
super(message);
this.code = code;
}
public short code;
// ExceptionCode
public static final short INDEX_SIZE_ERR = 1;
public static final short DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR = 2;
public static final short HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR = 3;
public static final short WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR = 4;
public static final short INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR = 5;
public static final short NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR = 6;
public static final short NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR = 7;
public static final short NOT_FOUND_ERR = 8;
public static final short NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR = 9;
public static final short INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR = 10;
public static final short INVALID_STATE_ERR = 11;
public static final short SYNTAX_ERR = 12;
public static final short INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR = 13;
public static final short NAMESPACE_ERR = 14;
public static final short INVALID_ACCESS_ERR = 15;
public static final short VALIDATION_ERR = 16;
}
org/w3c/dom/DOMImplementationSource.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface DOMImplementationSource {
public DOMImplementation getDOMImplementation(String features);
}
org/w3c/dom/DOMImplementation.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface DOMImplementation {
public boolean hasFeature(String feature,
String version);
public DocumentType createDocumentType(String qualifiedName,
String publicId,
String systemId)
throws DOMException;
public Document createDocument(String namespaceURI,
String qualifiedName,
DocumentType doctype)
throws DOMException;
public DOMImplementation getInterface(String feature);
}
org/w3c/dom/DocumentFragment.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface DocumentFragment extends Node {
}
org/w3c/dom/Document.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface Document extends Node {
public DocumentType getDoctype();
public DOMImplementation getImplementation();
public Element getDocumentElement();
public Element createElement(String tagName)
throws DOMException;
public DocumentFragment createDocumentFragment();
public Text createTextNode(String data);
public Comment createComment(String data);
public CDATASection createCDATASection(String data)
throws DOMException;
public ProcessingInstruction createProcessingInstruction(String target,
String data)
throws DOMException;
public Attr createAttribute(String name)
throws DOMException;
public EntityReference createEntityReference(String name)
throws DOMException;
public NodeList getElementsByTagName(String tagname);
public Node importNode(Node importedNode,
boolean deep)
throws DOMException;
public Element createElementNS(String namespaceURI,
String qualifiedName)
throws DOMException;
public Attr createAttributeNS(String namespaceURI,
String qualifiedName)
throws DOMException;
public NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(String namespaceURI,
String localName);
public Element getElementById(String elementId);
public String getActualEncoding();
public void setActualEncoding(String actualEncoding);
public String getEncoding();
public void setEncoding(String encoding);
public boolean getStandalone();
public void setStandalone(boolean standalone);
public String getVersion();
public void setVersion(String version)
throws DOMException;
public boolean getStrictErrorChecking();
public void setStrictErrorChecking(boolean strictErrorChecking);
public DOMErrorHandler getErrorHandler();
public void setErrorHandler(DOMErrorHandler errorHandler);
public String getDocumentURI();
public void setDocumentURI(String documentURI);
public Node adoptNode(Node source)
throws DOMException;
public void normalizeDocument();
public boolean canSetNormalizationFeature(String name,
boolean state);
public void setNormalizationFeature(String name,
boolean state)
throws DOMException;
public boolean getNormalizationFeature(String name)
throws DOMException;
public Node renameNode(Node n,
String namespaceURI,
String name)
throws DOMException;
}
org/w3c/dom/Node.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface Node {
// NodeType
public static final short ELEMENT_NODE = 1;
public static final short ATTRIBUTE_NODE = 2;
public static final short TEXT_NODE = 3;
public static final short CDATA_SECTION_NODE = 4;
public static final short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE = 5;
public static final short ENTITY_NODE = 6;
public static final short PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE = 7;
public static final short COMMENT_NODE = 8;
public static final short DOCUMENT_NODE = 9;
public static final short DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE = 10;
public static final short DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE = 11;
public static final short NOTATION_NODE = 12;
public String getNodeName();
public String getNodeValue()
throws DOMException;
public void setNodeValue(String nodeValue)
throws DOMException;
public short getNodeType();
public Node getParentNode();
public NodeList getChildNodes();
public Node getFirstChild();
public Node getLastChild();
public Node getPreviousSibling();
public Node getNextSibling();
public NamedNodeMap getAttributes();
public Document getOwnerDocument();
public Node insertBefore(Node newChild,
Node refChild)
throws DOMException;
public Node replaceChild(Node newChild,
Node oldChild)
throws DOMException;
public Node removeChild(Node oldChild)
throws DOMException;
public Node appendChild(Node newChild)
throws DOMException;
public boolean hasChildNodes();
public Node cloneNode(boolean deep);
public void normalize();
public boolean isSupported(String feature,
String version);
public String getNamespaceURI();
public String getPrefix();
public void setPrefix(String prefix)
throws DOMException;
public String getLocalName();
public boolean hasAttributes();
public String getBaseURI();
// TreePosition
public static final short TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING = 0x01;
public static final short TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING = 0x02;
public static final short TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR = 0x04;
public static final short TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT = 0x08;
public static final short TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT = 0x10;
public static final short TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE = 0x20;
public static final short TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED = 0x00;
public short compareTreePosition(Node other);
public String getTextContent()
throws DOMException;
public void setTextContent(String textContent)
throws DOMException;
public boolean isSameNode(Node other);
public String lookupNamespacePrefix(String namespaceURI);
public String lookupNamespaceURI(String prefix);
public boolean isEqualNode(Node arg,
boolean deep);
public Node getInterface(String feature);
public Object setUserData(String key,
Object data,
UserDataHandler handler);
public Object getUserData(String key);
}
org/w3c/dom/NodeList.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface NodeList {
public Node item(int index);
public int getLength();
}
org/w3c/dom/NamedNodeMap.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface NamedNodeMap {
public Node getNamedItem(String name);
public Node setNamedItem(Node arg)
throws DOMException;
public Node removeNamedItem(String name)
throws DOMException;
public Node item(int index);
public int getLength();
public Node getNamedItemNS(String namespaceURI,
String localName);
public Node setNamedItemNS(Node arg)
throws DOMException;
public Node removeNamedItemNS(String namespaceURI,
String localName)
throws DOMException;
}
org/w3c/dom/CharacterData.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface CharacterData extends Node {
public String getData()
throws DOMException;
public void setData(String data)
throws DOMException;
public int getLength();
public String substringData(int offset,
int count)
throws DOMException;
public void appendData(String arg)
throws DOMException;
public void insertData(int offset,
String arg)
throws DOMException;
public void deleteData(int offset,
int count)
throws DOMException;
public void replaceData(int offset,
int count,
String arg)
throws DOMException;
}
org/w3c/dom/Attr.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface Attr extends Node {
public String getName();
public boolean getSpecified();
public String getValue();
public void setValue(String value)
throws DOMException;
public Element getOwnerElement();
}
org/w3c/dom/Element.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface Element extends Node {
public String getTagName();
public String getAttribute(String name);
public void setAttribute(String name,
String value)
throws DOMException;
public void removeAttribute(String name)
throws DOMException;
public Attr getAttributeNode(String name);
public Attr setAttributeNode(Attr newAttr)
throws DOMException;
public Attr removeAttributeNode(Attr oldAttr)
throws DOMException;
public NodeList getElementsByTagName(String name);
public String getAttributeNS(String namespaceURI,
String localName);
public void setAttributeNS(String namespaceURI,
String qualifiedName,
String value)
throws DOMException;
public void removeAttributeNS(String namespaceURI,
String localName)
throws DOMException;
public Attr getAttributeNodeNS(String namespaceURI,
String localName);
public Attr setAttributeNodeNS(Attr newAttr)
throws DOMException;
public NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(String namespaceURI,
String localName);
public boolean hasAttribute(String name);
public boolean hasAttributeNS(String namespaceURI,
String localName);
}
org/w3c/dom/Text.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface Text extends CharacterData {
public Text splitText(int offset)
throws DOMException;
public boolean getIsWhitespaceInElementContent();
public String getWholeText();
public Text replaceWholeText(String content)
throws DOMException;
}
org/w3c/dom/Comment.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface Comment extends CharacterData {
}
org/w3c/dom/UserDataHandler.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface UserDataHandler {
// OperationType
public static final short NODE_CLONED = 1;
public static final short NODE_IMPORTED = 2;
public static final short NODE_DELETED = 3;
public static final short NODE_RENAMED = 4;
public void handle(short operation,
String key,
Object data,
Node src,
Node dst);
}
org/w3c/dom/DOMError.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface DOMError {
public static final short SEVERITY_WARNING = 0;
public static final short SEVERITY_ERROR = 1;
public static final short SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR = 2;
public short getSeverity();
public String getMessage();
public Object getRelatedException();
public DOMLocator getLocation();
}
org/w3c/dom/DOMErrorHandler.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface DOMErrorHandler {
public boolean handleError(DOMError error);
}
org/w3c/dom/DOMLocator.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface DOMLocator {
public int getLineNumber();
public int getColumnNumber();
public int getOffset();
public Node getErrorNode();
public String getUri();
}
org/w3c/dom/CDATASection.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface CDATASection extends Text {
}
org/w3c/dom/DocumentType.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface DocumentType extends Node {
public String getName();
public NamedNodeMap getEntities();
public NamedNodeMap getNotations();
public String getPublicId();
public String getSystemId();
public String getInternalSubset();
}
org/w3c/dom/Notation.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface Notation extends Node {
public String getPublicId();
public String getSystemId();
}
org/w3c/dom/Entity.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface Entity extends Node {
public String getPublicId();
public String getSystemId();
public String getNotationName();
public String getActualEncoding();
public void setActualEncoding(String actualEncoding);
public String getEncoding();
public void setEncoding(String encoding);
public String getVersion();
public void setVersion(String version);
}
org/w3c/dom/EntityReference.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface EntityReference extends Node {
}
org/w3c/dom/ProcessingInstruction.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
public interface ProcessingInstruction extends Node {
public String getTarget();
public String getData();
public void setData(String data)
throws DOMException;
}
14 January 2002
Appendix F: ECMAScript Language Binding
This appendix contains the complete ECMAScript [ECMAScript] binding for the
Level 3 Document Object Model Core definitions.
F.1: ECMAScript Binding Extension
This section defines the DOMImplementationRegistry object, discussed in
Bootstrapping, for ECMAScript.
Objects that implements the DOMImplementationRegistry interface
DOMImplementationRegistry is a global variable which has the following
functions:
getDOMImplementation(features)
This method returns the first registered object that
implements the DOMImplementation interface and has the
desired features, or null if none is found.
The features parameter is a String.
sources
This property is an Array. It contains all registered objects
that implement the DOMImplementationSource interface.
F.2: Other Core interfaces
Properties of the DOMException Constructor function:
DOMException.INDEX_SIZE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INDEX_SIZE_ERR is 1.
DOMException.DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR is 2.
DOMException.HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR is 3.
DOMException.WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR is 4.
DOMException.INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR is 5.
DOMException.NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR is 6.
DOMException.NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
is 7.
DOMException.NOT_FOUND_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NOT_FOUND_ERR is 8.
DOMException.NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR is 9.
DOMException.INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR is 10.
DOMException.INVALID_STATE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INVALID_STATE_ERR is 11.
DOMException.SYNTAX_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.SYNTAX_ERR is 12.
DOMException.INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR is
13.
DOMException.NAMESPACE_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.NAMESPACE_ERR is 14.
DOMException.INVALID_ACCESS_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.INVALID_ACCESS_ERR is 15.
DOMException.VALIDATION_ERR
The value of the constant DOMException.VALIDATION_ERR is 16.
Objects that implement the DOMException interface:
Properties of objects that implement the DOMException interface:
code
This property is a Number.
Objects that implement the DOMImplementationSource interface:
Functions of objects that implement the DOMImplementationSource
interface:
getDOMImplementation(features)
This function returns an object that implements the
DOMImplementation interface.
The features parameter is a String.
Objects that implement the DOMImplementation interface:
Functions of objects that implement the DOMImplementation interface:
hasFeature(feature, version)
This function returns a Boolean.
The feature parameter is a String.
The version parameter is a String.
createDocumentType(qualifiedName, publicId, systemId)
This function returns an object that implements the
DocumentType interface.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
The publicId parameter is a String.
The systemId parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
createDocument(namespaceURI, qualifiedName, doctype)
This function returns an object that implements the Document
interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
The doctype parameter is an object that implements the
DocumentType interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
getInterface(feature)
This function returns an object that implements the
DOMImplementation interface.
The feature parameter is a String.
Objects that implement the DocumentFragment interface:
Objects that implement the DocumentFragment interface have all
properties and functions of the Node interface.
Objects that implement the Document interface:
Objects that implement the Document interface have all properties and
functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions
defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Document interface:
doctype
This read-only property is an object that implements the
DocumentType interface.
implementation
This read-only property is an object that implements the
DOMImplementation interface.
documentElement
This read-only property is an object that implements the
Element interface.
actualEncoding
This property is a String.
encoding
This property is a String.
standalone
This property is a Boolean.
version
This property is a String and can raise an objewct that
implements DOMException interface on setting.
strictErrorChecking
This property is a Boolean.
errorHandler
This property is an object that implements the
DOMErrorHandler interface.
documentURI
This property is a String.
Functions of objects that implement the Document interface:
createElement(tagName)
This function returns an object that implements the Element
interface.
The tagName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
createDocumentFragment()
This function returns an object that implements the
DocumentFragment interface.
createTextNode(data)
This function returns an object that implements the Text
interface.
The data parameter is a String.
createComment(data)
This function returns an object that implements the Comment
interface.
The data parameter is a String.
createCDATASection(data)
This function returns an object that implements the
CDATASection interface.
The data parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
createProcessingInstruction(target, data)
This function returns an object that implements the
ProcessingInstruction interface.
The target parameter is a String.
The data parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
createAttribute(name)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr
interface.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
createEntityReference(name)
This function returns an object that implements the
EntityReference interface.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
getElementsByTagName(tagname)
This function returns an object that implements the NodeList
interface.
The tagname parameter is a String.
importNode(importedNode, deep)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The importedNode parameter is an object that implements the
Node interface.
The deep parameter is a Boolean.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
createElementNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName)
This function returns an object that implements the Element
interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
createAttributeNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr
interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
getElementsByTagNameNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the NodeList
interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
getElementById(elementId)
This function returns an object that implements the Element
interface.
The elementId parameter is a String.
adoptNode(source)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The source parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
normalizeDocument()
This function has no return value.
canSetNormalizationFeature(name, state)
This function returns a Boolean.
The name parameter is a String.
The state parameter is a Boolean.
setNormalizationFeature(name, state)
This function has no return value.
The name parameter is a String.
The state parameter is a Boolean.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
getNormalizationFeature(name)
This function returns a Boolean.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
renameNode(n, namespaceURI, name)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The n parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
Properties of the Node Constructor function:
Node.ELEMENT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.ELEMENT_NODE is 1.
Node.ATTRIBUTE_NODE
The value of the constant Node.ATTRIBUTE_NODE is 2.
Node.TEXT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.TEXT_NODE is 3.
Node.CDATA_SECTION_NODE
The value of the constant Node.CDATA_SECTION_NODE is 4.
Node.ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
The value of the constant Node.ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE is 5.
Node.ENTITY_NODE
The value of the constant Node.ENTITY_NODE is 6.
Node.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
The value of the constant Node.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE is 7.
Node.COMMENT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.COMMENT_NODE is 8.
Node.DOCUMENT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.DOCUMENT_NODE is 9.
Node.DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
The value of the constant Node.DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE is 10.
Node.DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
The value of the constant Node.DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE is 11.
Node.NOTATION_NODE
The value of the constant Node.NOTATION_NODE is 12.
Node.TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING is 0x01.
Node.TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING is 0x02.
Node.TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR is 0x04.
Node.TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT is 0x08.
Node.TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT is 0x10.
Node.TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE is 0x20.
Node.TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED
The value of the constant Node.TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED is 0x00.
Objects that implement the Node interface:
Properties of objects that implement the Node interface:
nodeName
This read-only property is a String.
nodeValue
This property is a String, can raise an object that
implements DOMException interface on setting and can raise an
object that implements the DOMException interface on
retrieval.
nodeType
This read-only property is a Number.
parentNode
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node
interface.
childNodes
This read-only property is an object that implements the
NodeList interface.
firstChild
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node
interface.
lastChild
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node
interface.
previousSibling
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node
interface.
nextSibling
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node
interface.
attributes
This read-only property is an object that implements the
NamedNodeMap interface.
ownerDocument
This read-only property is an object that implements the
Document interface.
namespaceURI
This read-only property is a String.
prefix
This property is a String and can raise an objewct that
implements DOMException interface on setting.
localName
This read-only property is a String.
baseURI
This read-only property is a String.
textContent
This property is a String, can raise an object that
implements DOMException interface on setting and can raise an
object that implements the DOMException interface on
retrieval.
Functions of objects that implement the Node interface:
insertBefore(newChild, refChild)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The newChild parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
The refChild parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
replaceChild(newChild, oldChild)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The newChild parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
The oldChild parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
removeChild(oldChild)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The oldChild parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
appendChild(newChild)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The newChild parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
hasChildNodes()
This function returns a Boolean.
cloneNode(deep)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The deep parameter is a Boolean.
normalize()
This function has no return value.
isSupported(feature, version)
This function returns a Boolean.
The feature parameter is a String.
The version parameter is a String.
hasAttributes()
This function returns a Boolean.
compareTreePosition(other)
This function returns a Number.
The other parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
isSameNode(other)
This function returns a Boolean.
The other parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
lookupNamespacePrefix(namespaceURI)
This function returns a String.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
lookupNamespaceURI(prefix)
This function returns a String.
The prefix parameter is a String.
isEqualNode(arg, deep)
This function returns a Boolean.
The arg parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
The deep parameter is a Boolean.
getInterface(feature)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The feature parameter is a String.
setUserData(key, data, handler)
This function returns an object that implements the any type
interface.
The key parameter is a String.
The data parameter is an object that implements the any type
interface.
The handler parameter is an object that implements the
UserDataHandler interface.
getUserData(key)
This function returns an object that implements the any type
interface.
The key parameter is a String.
Objects that implement the NodeList interface:
Properties of objects that implement the NodeList interface:
length
This read-only property is a Number.
Functions of objects that implement the NodeList interface:
item(index)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The index parameter is a Number.
Note: This object can also be dereferenced using square
bracket notation (e.g. obj[1]). Dereferencing with an integer
index is equivalent to invoking the item function with that
index.
Objects that implement the NamedNodeMap interface:
Properties of objects that implement the NamedNodeMap interface:
length
This read-only property is a Number.
Functions of objects that implement the NamedNodeMap interface:
getNamedItem(name)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The name parameter is a String.
setNamedItem(arg)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The arg parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
removeNamedItem(name)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
item(index)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The index parameter is a Number.
Note: This object can also be dereferenced using square
bracket notation (e.g. obj[1]). Dereferencing with an integer
index is equivalent to invoking the item function with that
index.
getNamedItemNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
setNamedItemNS(arg)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The arg parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
removeNamedItemNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the Node
interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
Objects that implement the CharacterData interface:
Objects that implement the CharacterData interface have all properties
and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and
functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the CharacterData interface:
data
This property is a String, can raise an object that
implements DOMException interface on setting and can raise an
object that implements the DOMException interface on
retrieval.
length
This read-only property is a Number.
Functions of objects that implement the CharacterData interface:
substringData(offset, count)
This function returns a String.
The offset parameter is a Number.
The count parameter is a Number.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
appendData(arg)
This function has no return value.
The arg parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
insertData(offset, arg)
This function has no return value.
The offset parameter is a Number.
The arg parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
deleteData(offset, count)
This function has no return value.
The offset parameter is a Number.
The count parameter is a Number.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
replaceData(offset, count, arg)
This function has no return value.
The offset parameter is a Number.
The count parameter is a Number.
The arg parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
Objects that implement the Attr interface:
Objects that implement the Attr interface have all properties and
functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions
defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Attr interface:
name
This read-only property is a String.
specified
This read-only property is a Boolean.
value
This property is a String and can raise an objewct that
implements DOMException interface on setting.
ownerElement
This read-only property is an object that implements the
Element interface.
Objects that implement the Element interface:
Objects that implement the Element interface have all properties and
functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions
defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Element interface:
tagName
This read-only property is a String.
Functions of objects that implement the Element interface:
getAttribute(name)
This function returns a String.
The name parameter is a String.
setAttribute(name, value)
This function has no return value.
The name parameter is a String.
The value parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
removeAttribute(name)
This function has no return value.
The name parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
getAttributeNode(name)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr
interface.
The name parameter is a String.
setAttributeNode(newAttr)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr
interface.
The newAttr parameter is an object that implements the Attr
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
removeAttributeNode(oldAttr)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr
interface.
The oldAttr parameter is an object that implements the Attr
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
getElementsByTagName(name)
This function returns an object that implements the NodeList
interface.
The name parameter is a String.
getAttributeNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns a String.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
setAttributeNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName, value)
This function has no return value.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The qualifiedName parameter is a String.
The value parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
removeAttributeNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function has no return value.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
getAttributeNodeNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr
interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
setAttributeNodeNS(newAttr)
This function returns an object that implements the Attr
interface.
The newAttr parameter is an object that implements the Attr
interface.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
getElementsByTagNameNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns an object that implements the NodeList
interface.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
hasAttribute(name)
This function returns a Boolean.
The name parameter is a String.
hasAttributeNS(namespaceURI, localName)
This function returns a Boolean.
The namespaceURI parameter is a String.
The localName parameter is a String.
Objects that implement the Text interface:
Objects that implement the Text interface have all properties and
functions of the CharacterData interface as well as the properties and
functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Text interface:
isWhitespaceInElementContent
This read-only property is a Boolean.
wholeText
This read-only property is a String.
Functions of objects that implement the Text interface:
splitText(offset)
This function returns an object that implements the Text
interface.
The offset parameter is a Number.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
replaceWholeText(content)
This function returns an object that implements the Text
interface.
The content parameter is a String.
This function can raise an object that implements the
DOMException interface.
Objects that implement the Comment interface:
Objects that implement the Comment interface have all properties and
functions of the CharacterData interface.
Properties of the UserDataHandler Constructor function:
UserDataHandler.NODE_CLONED
The value of the constant UserDataHandler.NODE_CLONED is 1.
UserDataHandler.NODE_IMPORTED
The value of the constant UserDataHandler.NODE_IMPORTED is 2.
UserDataHandler.NODE_DELETED
The value of the constant UserDataHandler.NODE_DELETED is 3.
UserDataHandler.NODE_RENAMED
The value of the constant UserDataHandler.NODE_RENAMED is 4.
Objects that implement the UserDataHandler interface:
Functions of objects that implement the UserDataHandler interface:
handle(operation, key, data, src, dst)
This function has no return value.
The operation parameter is a Number.
The key parameter is a String.
The data parameter is an object that implements the Object
interface.
The src parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
The dst parameter is an object that implements the Node
interface.
Properties of the DOMError Constructor function:
DOMError.SEVERITY_WARNING
The value of the constant DOMError.SEVERITY_WARNING is 0.
DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR
The value of the constant DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR is 1.
DOMError.SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR
The value of the constant DOMError.SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR is 2.
Objects that implement the DOMError interface:
Properties of objects that implement the DOMError interface:
severity
This read-only property is a Number.
message
This read-only property is a String.
relatedException
This read-only property is an object that implements the
Object interface.
location
This read-only property is an object that implements the
DOMLocator interface.
Objects that implement the DOMErrorHandler interface:
Functions of objects that implement the DOMErrorHandler interface:
handleError(error)
This function returns a Boolean.
The error parameter is an object that implements the DOMError
interface.
Objects that implement the DOMLocator interface:
Properties of objects that implement the DOMLocator interface:
lineNumber
This read-only property is a Number.
columnNumber
This read-only property is a Number.
offset
This read-only property is a Number.
errorNode
This read-only property is an object that implements the Node
interface.
uri
This read-only property is a String.
Objects that implement the CDATASection interface:
Objects that implement the CDATASection interface have all properties
and functions of the Text interface.
Objects that implement the DocumentType interface:
Objects that implement the DocumentType interface have all properties
and functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and
functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the DocumentType interface:
name
This read-only property is a String.
entities
This read-only property is an object that implements the
NamedNodeMap interface.
notations
This read-only property is an object that implements the
NamedNodeMap interface.
publicId
This read-only property is a String.
systemId
This read-only property is a String.
internalSubset
This read-only property is a String.
Objects that implement the Notation interface:
Objects that implement the Notation interface have all properties and
functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions
defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Notation interface:
publicId
This read-only property is a String.
systemId
This read-only property is a String.
Objects that implement the Entity interface:
Objects that implement the Entity interface have all properties and
functions of the Node interface as well as the properties and functions
defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the Entity interface:
publicId
This read-only property is a String.
systemId
This read-only property is a String.
notationName
This read-only property is a String.
actualEncoding
This property is a String.
encoding
This property is a String.
version
This property is a String.
Objects that implement the EntityReference interface:
Objects that implement the EntityReference interface have all
properties and functions of the Node interface.
Objects that implement the ProcessingInstruction interface:
Objects that implement the ProcessingInstruction interface have all
properties and functions of the Node interface as well as the
properties and functions defined below.
Properties of objects that implement the ProcessingInstruction
interface:
target
This read-only property is a String.
data
This property is a String and can raise an objewct that
implements DOMException interface on setting.
14 January 2002
Appendix G: Acknowledgements
Many people contributed to the DOM specifications (Level 1, 2 or 3),
including members of the DOM Working Group and the DOM Interest Group. We
especially thank the following:
Andrew Watson (Object Management Group), Andy Heninger (IBM), Angel Diaz
(IBM), Arnaud Le Hors (W3C and IBM), Ashok Malhotra (IBM and Microsoft), Ben
Chang (Oracle), Bill Smith (Sun), Bill Shea (Merrill Lynch), Bob Sutor
(IBM), Chris Lovett (Microsoft), Chris Wilson (Microsoft), David Brownell
(Sun), David Ezell (Hewlett Packard Company), David Singer (IBM), Dimitris
Dimitriadis (Improve AB), Don Park (invited), Elena Litani (IBM), Eric
Vasilik (Microsoft), Gavin Nicol (INSO), Ian Jacobs (W3C), James Clark
(invited), James Davidson (Sun), Jared Sorensen (Novell), Jeroen van
Rotterdam (X-Hive Corporation), Joe Kesselman (IBM), Joe Lapp (webMethods),
Joe Marini (Macromedia), Johnny Stenback (Netscape/AOL), Jon Ferraiolo
(Adobe), Jonathan Marsh (Microsoft), Jonathan Robie (Texcel Research and
Software AG), Kim Adamson-Sharpe (SoftQuad Software Inc.), Lauren Wood
(SoftQuad Software Inc., former chair), Laurence Cable (Sun), Mark Davis
(IBM), Mark Scardina (Oracle), Martin Dürst (W3C), Mary Brady (NIST), Mick
Goulish (Software AG), Mike Champion (Arbortext and Software AG), Miles
Sabin (Cromwell Media), Patti Lutsky (Arbortext), Paul Grosso (Arbortext),
Peter Sharpe (SoftQuad Software Inc.), Phil Karlton (Netscape), Philippe Le
Hégaret (W3C, W3C team contact and Chair), Ramesh Lekshmynarayanan (Merrill
Lynch), Ray Whitmer (iMall, Excite@Home, and Netscape/AOL), Rezaur Rahman
(Intel), Rich Rollman (Microsoft), Rick Gessner (Netscape), Rick Jelliffe
(invited), Rob Relyea (Microsoft), Scott Isaacs (Microsoft), Sharon Adler
(INSO), Steve Byrne (JavaSoft), Tim Bray (invited), Tim Yu (Oracle), Tom
Pixley (Netscape/AOL), Vidur Apparao (Netscape), Vinod Anupam (Lucent).
Thanks to all those who have helped to improve this specification by sending
suggestions and corrections (Please, keep bugging us with your issues!).
G.1: Production Systems
This specification was written in XML. The HTML, OMG IDL, Java and
ECMAScript bindings were all produced automatically.
Thanks to Joe English, author of cost, which was used as the basis for
producing DOM Level 1. Thanks also to Gavin Nicol, who wrote the scripts
which run on top of cost. Arnaud Le Hors and Philippe Le Hégaret maintained
the scripts.
After DOM Level 1, we used Xerces as the basis DOM implementation and wish
to thank the authors. Philippe Le Hégaret and Arnaud Le Hors wrote the Java
programs which are the DOM application.
Thanks also to Jan Kärrman, author of html2ps, which we use in creating the
PostScript version of the specification.
14 January 2002
Glossary
Editors:
Arnaud Le Hors, W3C
Robert S. Sutor, IBM Research (for DOM Level 1)
Several of the following term definitions have been borrowed or modified
from similar definitions in other W3C or standards documents. See the links
within the definitions for more information.
16-bit unit
The base unit of a DOMString. This indicates that indexing on a
DOMString occurs in units of 16 bits. This must not be misunderstood to
mean that a DOMString can store arbitrary 16-bit units. A DOMString is
a character string encoded in UTF-16; this means that the restrictions
of UTF-16 as well as the other relevant restrictions on character
strings must be maintained. A single character, for example in the form
of a numeric character reference, may correspond to one or two 16-bit
units.
ancestor
An ancestor node of any node A is any node above A in a tree model of a
document, where "above" means "toward the root."
API
An API is an Application Programming Interface, a set of functions or
methods used to access some functionality.
child
A child is an immediate descendant node of a node.
client application
A [client] application is any software that uses the Document Object
Model programming interfaces provided by the hosting implementation to
accomplish useful work. Some examples of client applications are
scripts within an HTML or XML document.
COM
COM is Microsoft's Component Object Model [COM], a technology for
building applications from binary software components.
convenience
A convenience method is an operation on an object that could be
accomplished by a program consisting of more basic operations on the
object. Convenience methods are usually provided to make the API easier
and simpler to use or to allow specific programs to create more
optimized implementations for common operations. A similar definition
holds for a convenience property.
data model
A data model is a collection of descriptions of data structures and
their contained fields, together with the operations or functions that
manipulate them.
descendant
A descendant node of any node A is any node below A in a tree model of
a document, where "below" means "away from the root."
document element
There is only one document element in a Document. This element node is
a child of the Document node. See Well-Formed XML Documents in XML [XML
1.0].
document order
There is an ordering, document order, defined on all the nodes in the
document corresponding to the order in which the first character of the
XML representation of each node occurs in the XML representation of the
document after expansion of general entities. Thus, the document
element node will be the first node. Element nodes occur before their
children. Thus, document order orders element nodes in order of the
occurrence of their start-tag in the XML (after expansion of entities).
The attribute nodes of an element occur after the element and before
its children. The relative order of attribute nodes is
implementation-dependent.
ECMAScript
The programming language defined by the ECMA-262 standard [ECMAScript].
As stated in the standard, the originating technology for ECMAScript
was JavaScript [JavaScript]. Note that in the ECMAScript binding, the
word "property" is used in the same sense as the IDL term "attribute."
element
Each document contains one or more elements, the boundaries of which
are either delimited by start-tags and end-tags, or, for empty elements
by an empty-element tag. Each element has a type, identified by name,
and may have a set of attributes. Each attribute has a name and a
value. See Logical Structures in XML [XML 1.0].
information item
An information item is an abstract representation of some component of
an XML document. See the [XML Information set] for details.
logically-adjacent text nodes
Logically-adjacent text nodes are Text or CDataSection nodes that may
be visited sequentially in document order without entering, exiting, or
passing over Element, Comment, or ProcessingInstruction nodes.
hosting implementation
A [hosting] implementation is a software module that provides an
implementation of the DOM interfaces so that a client application can
use them. Some examples of hosting implementations are browsers,
editors and document repositories.
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used
to create hypertext documents that are portable from one platform to
another. HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that
are appropriate for representing information from a wide range of
applications. [HTML 4.0]
inheritance
In object-oriented programming, the ability to create new classes (or
interfaces) that contain all the methods and properties of another
class (or interface), plus additional methods and properties. If class
(or interface) D inherits from class (or interface) B, then D is said
to be derived from B. B is said to be a base class (or interface) for
D. Some programming languages allow for multiple inheritance, that is,
inheritance from more than one class or interface.
interface
An interface is a declaration of a set of methods with no information
given about their implementation. In object systems that support
interfaces and inheritance, interfaces can usually inherit from one
another.
language binding
A programming language binding for an IDL specification is an
implementation of the interfaces in the specification for the given
language. For example, a Java language binding for the Document Object
Model IDL specification would implement the concrete Java classes that
provide the functionality exposed by the interfaces.
local name
A local name is the local part of a qualified name. This is called the
local part in Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
method
A method is an operation or function that is associated with an object
and is allowed to manipulate the object's data.
model
A model is the actual data representation for the information at hand.
Examples are the structural model and the style model representing the
parse structure and the style information associated with a document.
The model might be a tree, or a directed graph, or something else.
namespace prefix
A namespace prefix is a string that associates an element or attribute
name with a namespace URI in XML. See namespace prefix in Namespaces in
XML [XML Namespaces].
namespace URI
A namespace URI is a URI that identifies an XML namespace. This is
called the namespace name in Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
object model
An object model is a collection of descriptions of classes or
interfaces, together with their member data, member functions, and
class-static operations.
parent
A parent is an immediate ancestor node of a node.
partially valid
A node in a DOM tree is partially valid if it is well formed (this part
is for comments and processing instructions) and its immediate children
are those expected by the content model. The node may be missing
trailing required children yet still be considered partially valid.
qualified name
A qualified name is the name of an element or attribute defined as the
concatenation of a local name (as defined in this specification),
optionally preceded by a namespace prefix and colon character. See
Qualified Names in Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
read only node
A read only node is a node that is immutable. This means its list of
children, its content, and its attributes, when it is an element,
cannot be changed in any way. However, a read only node can possibly be
moved, when it is not itself contained in a read only node.
root node
The root node is a node that is not a child of any other node. All
other nodes are children or other descendants of the root node.
sibling
Two nodes are siblings if they have the same parent node.
string comparison
When string matching is required, it is to occur as though the
comparison was between 2 sequences of code points from [Unicode 3.0].
token
An information item such as an XML Name which has been tokenized.
tokenized
The description given to various information items (for example,
attribute values of various types, but not including the StringType
CDATA) after having been processed by the XML processor. The process
includes stripping leading and trailing white space, and replacing
multiple space characters by one. See the definition of tokenized type.
well-formed document
A document is well-formed if it is tag valid and entities are limited
to single elements (i.e., single sub-trees).
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is an extremely simple dialect of SGML
which is completely described in this document. The goal is to enable
generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the
way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of
implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML. [XML
1.0]
XML name
See XML name in the XML specification ([XML 1.0]).
XML namespace
An XML namespace is a collection of names, identified by a URI
reference [RFC2396], which are used in XML documents as element types
and attribute names. [XML Namespaces]
14 January 2002
References
For the latest version of any W3C specification please consult the list of
W3C Technical Reports available at http://www.w3.org/TR.
I.1: Normative references
CharModel
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Character Model for the World Wide Web,
January 2001. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-charmod-20010126
DOM Level 1
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) DOM Level 1 Specification, October
1998. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1
DOM Level 2 Core
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Document Object Model Level 2 Core
Specification, November 2000. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Core-20001113
DOM Level 2 HTML
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Document Object Model Level 2 HTML
Specification, November 2000. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20001113
ECMAScript
ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO/IEC
16262:1998. ECMAScript Language Specification. Available from ECMA
(European Computer Manufacturers Association) at
http://www.ecma.ch/ecma1/STAND/ECMA-262.HTM
ISO/IEC 10646
ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO/IEC
10646-1:2000 (E). Information technology - Universal Multiple-Octet
Coded Character Set (UCS) - Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual
Plane. [Geneva]: International Organization for Standardization.
Java
Sun Microsystems Inc. The Java Language Specification, James Gosling,
Bill Joy, and Guy Steele, September 1996. Available at
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls
MathML 2.0
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Mathematical Markup Language (MathML)
Version 2.0, February 2001. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2
OMGIDL
OMG (Object Management Group) IDL (Interface Definition Language)
defined in The Common Object Request Broker: Architecture and
Specification, version 2.3.1, October 1999. Available from
http://www.omg.org
SVG 1.0
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0
Specification, September 2001. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG
Unicode 3.0
The Unicode Consortium. The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0., 2000,
Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Developers Press, 2000. ISBN
0-201-61633-5.
XML 1.0
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0,
October 2000. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xml-20001006
XML 1.1
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1,
December 2001. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xml11-20011213/
XML Base
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XML Base, June 2001. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase
XML Information set
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XML Information Set, October 2001.
Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xml-infoset-20011024
XML Namespaces
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Namespaces in XML, January 1999.
Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names-19990114
I.2: Informative references
Canonical XML
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Canonical XML, March 2001. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xml-c14n-20010315
COM
Microsoft Corporation The Component Object Model. Available at
http://www.microsoft.com/com
CORBA
OMG (Object Management Group) The Common Object Request Broker:
Architecture and Specification, version 2.3.1, October 1999. Available
from http://www.omg.org
DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas and Load and Save
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Document Object Model Level 3 Abstract
Schemas and Load and Save Specification, June 2001. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-ASLS
DOM Level 3 Events
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Document Object Model Level 3 Events
Specification, August 2001. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events
DOM Level 3 XPath
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Document Object Model Level 3 XPath
Specification, August 2001. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-XPath
HTML 4.0
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) HTML 4.0 Specification, April 1998.
Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424
Java IDL
Sun Microsystems Inc. Java IDL. Available at
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/idl
JavaScript
Netscape Communications Corporation JavaScript Resources. Available at
http://developer.netscape.com/tech/javascript/resources.html
JScript
Microsoft JScript Resources. Available at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/default.htm
MIDL
Microsoft Corporation MIDL Language Reference. Available at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/midl/mi-laref_1r1h.htm
RFC2396
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) RFC 2396: Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, eds. T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L.
Masinter. August 1998. Available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt
XPointer
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XML Pointer Language (XPointer),
January 2001. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr
14 January 2002
Index
16-bit unit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9
[attributes] [base URI] [character encoding scheme]
[character code] [children] [content] 1, 2
[declaration base URI] [document element] [element content
whitespace]
[local name] [namespace name] [normalized value]
[notations] [owner element] [parent]
[prefix] [public identifier] 1, 2, [specified]
3
[standalone] [system identifier] 1, 2, [target]
3
[version]
actualEncoding 1, 2 adoptNode ancestor 1, 2, 3, 4
API 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 appendChild appendData
Attr ATTRIBUTE_NODE attributes
baseURI
Canonical XML 1, 2 canSetNormalizationFeature CDATA_SECTION_NODE
CDATASection CharacterData CharModel 1, 2, 3
child 1, 2, 3 childNodes client application 1, 2
cloneNode columnNumber COM 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Comment COMMENT_NODE compareTreePosition
convenience 1, 2, 3 CORBA 1, 2 createAttribute
createAttributeNS createCDATASection createComment
createDocument createDocumentFragment createDocumentType
createElement createElementNS createEntityReference
createProcessingInstruction createTextNode
data 1, 2 data model 1, 2 deleteData
descendant 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7 doctype Document
document element 1, 2 document order 1, 2, 3, 4, DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
5, 6
DOCUMENT_NODE DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE documentElement
DocumentFragment DocumentType documentURI
DOM Level 1 1, 2, 3 DOM Level 2 Core 1, 2, 3, DOM Level 2 HTML 1, 2, 3
4
DOM Level 3 Abstract Schemas
and Load and Save 1, 2, 3, DOM Level 3 Events 1, 2 DOM Level 3 XPath 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6 4
DOMError DOMErrorHandler DOMException
DOMImplementation DOMImplementationSource DOMKeyObject
DOMLocator DOMObject DOMString
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR DOMTimeStamp
ECMAScript 1, 2, 3, 4 Element 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ELEMENT_NODE
encoding 1, 2 entities Entity
ENTITY_NODE ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE EntityReference
errorHandler errorNode
firstChild
getAttribute getAttributeNode getAttributeNodeNS
getAttributeNS getDOMImplementation getElementById
getElementsByTagName 1, 2 getElementsByTagNameNS 1, getInterface 1, 2
2
getNamedItem getNamedItemNS getNormalizationFeature
getUserData
handle handleError hasAttribute
hasAttributeNS hasAttributes hasChildNodes
hasFeature HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR hosting implementation 1, 2
HTML 1, 2 HTML 4.0 1, 2
implementation importNode INDEX_SIZE_ERR
information item 1, 2 inheritance 1, 2 insertBefore
insertData interface 1, 2 internalSubset
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR INVALID_ACCESS_ERR INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR INVALID_STATE_ERR isEqualNode
ISO/IEC 10646 1, 2 isSameNode isSupported
isWhitespaceInElementContentitem 1, 2
Java 1, 2 Java IDL 1, 2 JavaScript 1, 2, 3
JScript 1, 2
language binding 1, 2 lastChild length 1, 2, 3
lineNumber live 1, 2, 3 local name 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
localName location logically-adjacent text
nodes 1, 2, 3
lookupNamespacePrefix lookupNamespaceURI
MathML 2.0 1, 2 message method 1, 2
MIDL 1, 2 model 1, 2
name 1, 2 NamedNodeMap namespace prefix 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6
namespace URI 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, NAMESPACE_ERR namespaceURI
14, 15, 16, 17
nextSibling NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
Node NODE_CLONED NODE_DELETED
NODE_IMPORTED NODE_RENAMED NodeList
nodeName nodeType nodeValue
normalize normalizeDocument NOT_FOUND_ERR
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR Notation NOTATION_NODE
notationName notations
object model 1, 2, 3 offset OMGIDL 1, 2, 3
ownerDocument ownerElement
parent 1, 2 parentNode partially valid 1, 2
prefix previousSibling PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
ProcessingInstruction publicId 1, 2, 3
qualified name 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9
read only node 1, 2, 3, 4, 5relatedException removeAttribute
removeAttributeNode removeAttributeNS removeChild
removeNamedItem removeNamedItemNS renameNode
replaceChild replaceData replaceWholeText
RFC2396 1, 2 root node 1, 2
setAttribute setAttributeNode setAttributeNodeNS
setAttributeNS setNamedItem setNamedItemNS
setNormalizationFeature setUserData severity
SEVERITY_ERROR SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR SEVERITY_WARNING
sibling 1, 2, 3 specified splitText
standalone strictErrorChecking string comparison 1, 2, 3
substringData SVG 1.0 1, 2 SYNTAX_ERR
systemId 1, 2, 3
tagName target Text
TEXT_NODE textContent token 1, 2
tokenized 1, 2 TREE_POSITION_ANCESTOR TREE_POSITION_DESCENDANT
TREE_POSITION_DISCONNECTED TREE_POSITION_EQUIVALENT TREE_POSITION_FOLLOWING
TREE_POSITION_PRECEDING TREE_POSITION_SAME_NODE
Unicode 3.0 1, 2, 3 uri UserDataHandler
VALIDATION_ERR value version 1, 2
well-formed document 1, 2 wholeText WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
XML 1, 2 XML 1.0 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, XML 1.1 1, 2
7, 8, 9, 10
XML Information set 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16,
XML Base 1, 2 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, XML name 1, 2
23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28,
29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34,
35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40
XML Namespaces 1, 2, 3, 4,
XML namespace 1, 2 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, XPointer 1, 2
13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 20, 21, 22