This specification defines a set of objects and interfaces for accessing and manipulating document objects. The functionality specified (the Core functionality) is sufficient to allow software developers and Web script authors to access and manipulate parsed HTML [HTML 4.01] and XML [XML 1.0] content inside conforming products. The DOM Core API also allows creation and population of a Document object using only DOM API calls. A solution for loading a Document and saving it persistently is proposed in [DOM Level 3 Load and Save].
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, EntityReferenceDocumentType -- no childrenEntityReference -- Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection, EntityReferenceElement -- Element, Text, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, CDATASection, EntityReferenceAttr -- Text, EntityReferenceProcessingInstruction -- no childrenComment -- no childrenText -- no childrenCDATASection -- no childrenEntity -- Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection, EntityReferenceNotation -- no childrenThe DOM also specifies a NodeList interface to handle ordered lists of Nodes, such as the children of a Node, or the elements returned by the Element.getElementsByTagNameNS(namespaceURI, localName) method, and also a NamedNodeMap interface to handle unordered sets of nodes referenced by their name attribute, such as the attributes of an Element. NodeList and NamedNodeMap objects in the DOM are live; that is, changes to the underlying document structure are reflected in all relevant NodeList and NamedNodeMap objects. For example, if a DOM user gets a NodeList object containing the children of an Element, then subsequently adds more children to that element (or removes children, or modifies them), those changes are automatically reflected in the NodeList, without further action on the user's part. Likewise, changes to a Node in the tree are reflected in all references to that Node in NodeList and NamedNodeMap objects.
Finally, the interfaces Text, Comment, and CDATASection all inherit from the CharacterData interface.
Most of the APIs defined by this specification are interfaces rather than classes. That means that an implementation need only expose methods with the defined names and specified operation, not implement classes that correspond directly to the interfaces. This allows the DOM APIs to be implemented as a thin veneer on top of legacy applications with their own data structures, or on top of newer applications with different class hierarchies. This also means that ordinary constructors (in the Java or C++ sense) cannot be used to create DOM objects, since the underlying objects to be constructed may have little relationship to the DOM interfaces. The conventional solution to this in object-oriented design is to define factory methods that create instances of objects that implement the various interfaces. 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 ConventionsWhile 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 [OMG IDL] and ECMAScript [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 APIThe 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 Node.nodeName attribute on the Node interface, there is still a Element.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.
To ensure interoperability, this specification specifies the following basic types used in various DOM modules. Even though the DOM uses the basic types in the interfaces, bindings may use different types and normative bindings are only given for Java and ECMAScript in this specification.
1.2.1 TheDOMString Type
The DOMString type is used to store [Unicode] characters as a sequence of 16-bit units using UTF-16 as defined in [Unicode] and Amendment 1 of [ISO/IEC 10646].
Characters are fully normalized as defined in appendix B of [XML 1.1] if:
true while loading the document or the document was certified as defined in [XML 1.1];true while using the method Document.normalizeDocument(), or while using the method Node.normalize();Note that, with the exceptions of Document.normalizeDocument() and Node.normalize(), manipulating characters using DOM methods does not guarantee to preserve a fully-normalized text.
A DOMString is a sequence of 16-bit units.
valuetype DOMString sequence<unsigned short>;
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). For issues related to string comparisons, refer to String Comparisons in the DOM.
For Java and ECMAScript, DOMString is bound to the String type because both languages also use UTF-16 as their encoding.
Note: As of August 2000, the OMG IDL specification ([OMG IDL]) included a wstring type. However, that definition did not meet the interoperability criteria of the DOM API since it relied on negotiation to decide the width and encoding of a character.
The DOM has many interfaces that imply string matching. For XML, string comparisons are case-sensitive and performed with a binary comparison of the 16-bit units of the DOMStrings. However, for case-insensitive markup languages, such as HTML 4.01 or earlier, these comparisons are case-insensitive where appropriate.
Note that HTML processors often perform specific case normalizations (canonicalization) of the markup before the DOM structures are built. This is typically using uppercase for element names and lowercase for attribute names. For this reason, applications should also compare element and attribute names returned by the DOM implementation in a case-insensitive manner.
The character normalization, i.e. transforming into their fully normalized form as as defined in [XML 1.1], is assumed to happen at serialization time. The DOM Level 3 Load and Save module [DOM Level 3 Load and Save] provides a serialization mechanism (see the DOMSerializer interface, section 2.3.1) and uses the DOMConfiguration parameters "normalize-characters" and "check-character-normalization" to assure that text is fully normalized [XML 1.1]. Other serialization mechanisms built on top of the DOM Level 3 Core also have to assure that text is fully normalized.
The DOM specification relies on DOMString values as resource identifiers, such that the following conditions are met:
The term "absolute URI" refers to a complete resource identifier and the term "relative URI" refers to an incomplete resource identifier.
Within the DOM specifications, these identifiers are called URIs, "Uniform Resource Identifiers", but this is meant abstractly. The DOM implementation does not necessarily process its URIs according to the URI specification [IETF RFC 2396]. Generally the particular form of these identifiers must be ignored.
When is not possible to completely ignore the type of a DOM URI, either because a relative identifier must be made absolute or because content must be retrieved, the DOM implementation must at least support identifier types appropriate to the content being processed. [HTML 4.01], [XML 1.0], and associated namespace specification [XML Namespaces] rely on [IETF RFC 2396] to determine permissible characters and resolving relative URIs. Other specifications such as namespaces in XML 1.1 [XML Namespaces 1.1] may rely on alternative resource identifier types that may, for example, include non-ASCII characters, necessitating support for alternative resource identifier types where required by applicable specifications.
1.3.3 XML NamespacesDOM Level 2 and 3 support 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. When [XML 1.1] is in use (see Document.xmlVersion), DOM Level 3 also supports [XML Namespaces 1.1].
As far as the DOM is concerned, special attributes used for declaring XML namespaces are still exposed and can be manipulated just like any other attribute. However, nodes are permanently bound to namespace URIs as they get created. Consequently, moving a node within a document, using the DOM, in no case results in a change of its namespace prefix or namespace URI. Similarly, creating a node with a namespace prefix and namespace URI, or changing the namespace prefix of a node, does not result in any addition, removal, or modification of any special attributes for declaring the appropriate XML namespaces. Namespace validation is not enforced; the DOM application is responsible. In particular, since the mapping between prefixes and namespace URIs is not enforced, in general, the resulting document cannot be serialized naively. For example, applications may have to declare every namespace in use when serializing a document.
In general, the DOM implementation (and higher) doesn't perform any URI normalization or canonicalization. The URIs given to the DOM are assumed to be valid (e.g., characters such as white spaces are properly escaped), and no lexical checking is performed. Absolute URI references are treated as strings and compared literally. How relative namespace URI references are treated is undefined. To ensure interoperability only absolute namespace URI references (i.e., URI references beginning with a scheme name and a colon) should be used. Applications should use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace. In programming languages where empty strings can be differentiated from null, empty strings, when given as a namespace URI, are converted to null. This is true even though the DOM does no lexical checking of URIs.
Note: Element.setAttributeNS(null, ...) puts the attribute in the per-element-type partitions as defined in XML Namespace Partitions in [XML Namespaces].
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" as introduced in [XML Namespaces 1.1].
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 Document.createEntityReference(name) is used to create entity references that correspond to such entities, since the descendants of the returned EntityReference are unbound. While DOM Level 3 does have support for the resolution of namespace prefixes, use of such entities and entity references should be avoided or used with extreme care.
The "NS" methods, such as Document.createElementNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName) and Document.createAttributeNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName), 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 Document.createElement(tagName) and Document.createAttribute(name). Elements and attributes created in this way do not have any namespace prefix, namespace URI, or local name.
Note: DOM Level 1 methods are namespace ignorant. Therefore, while it is safe to use these methods when not dealing with namespaces, using them and the new ones at the same time should be avoided. DOM Level 1 methods solely identify attribute nodes by their Node.nodeName. On the contrary, the DOM Level 2 methods related to namespaces, identify attribute nodes by their Node.namespaceURI and Node.localName. Because of this fundamental difference, mixing both sets of methods can lead to unpredictable results. In particular, using Element.setAttributeNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName, value), an element may have two attributes (or more) that have the same Node.nodeName, but different Node.namespaceURIs. Calling Element.getAttribute(name) with that nodeName could then return any of those attributes. The result depends on the implementation. Similarly, using Element.setAttributeNode(newAttr), one can set two attributes (or more) that have different Node.nodeNames but the same Node.prefix and Node.namespaceURI. In this case Element.getAttributeNodeNS(namespaceURI, localName) 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, Element.setAttribute(name, value) and Element.setAttributeNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName, value) affect the node that Element.getAttribute(name) and Element.getAttributeNS(namespaceURI, localName), respectively, return.
The DOM Level 3 adds support for the [base URI] property defined in [XML Information Set] by providing a new attribute on the Node interface that exposes this information. However, unlike the Node.namespaceURI attribute, the Node.baseURI attribute is not a static piece of information that every node carries. Instead, it is a value that is dynamically computed according to [XML Base]. This means its value depends on the location of the node in the tree and moving the node from one place to another in the tree may affect its value. Other changes, such as adding or changing an xml:base attribute on the node being queried or one of its ancestors may also affect its value.
One consequence of this it that when external entity references are expanded while building a Document one may need to add, or change, an xml:base attribute to the Element nodes originally contained in the entity being expanded so that the Node.baseURI returns the correct value. In the case of ProcessingInstruction nodes originally contained in the entity being expanded the information is lost. [DOM Level 3 Load and Save] handles elements as described here and generates a warning in the latter case.
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 by their users. For example, the MathML [MathML 2.0] and SVG [SVG 1.1] specifications have developed 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 Namespaces in XML specification [XML Namespaces] 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.
Each DOM module defines one or more features, as listed in the conformance section (Conformance). Features are case-insensitive and are also defined for a specific set of versions. For example, this specification defines the features "Core" and "XML", for the version "3.0". Versions "1.0" and "2.0" can also be used for features defined in the corresponding DOM Levels. To avoid possible conflicts, as a convention, names referring to features defined outside the DOM specification should be made unique. Applications could then request for features to be supported by a DOM implementation using the methods DOMImplementationSource.getDOMImplementation(features) or DOMImplementationSource.getDOMImplementationList(features), check the features supported by a DOM implementation using the method DOMImplementation.hasFeature(feature, version), or by a specific node using Node.isSupported(feature, version). Note that when using the methods that take a feature and a version as parameters, applications can use null or empty string for the version parameter if they don't wish to specify a particular version for the specified feature.
Up to the DOM Level 2 modules, all interfaces, that were an extension of existing ones, were accessible using binding-specific casting mechanisms if the feature associated to the extension was supported. For example, an instance of the EventTarget interface could be obtained from an instance of the Node interface if the feature "Events" was supported by the node.
As discussed Mixed DOM Implementations, DOM Level 3 Core should be able to collaborate with subcomponents implementing specific DOMs. For that effect, the methods DOMImplementation.getFeature(feature, version) and Node.getFeature(feature, version) were introduced. In the case of DOMImplementation.hasFeature(feature, version) and Node.isSupported(feature, version), if a plus sign "+" is prepended to any feature name, implementations are considered in which the specified feature may not be directly castable but would require discovery through DOMImplementation.getFeature(feature, version) and Node.getFeature(feature, version). Without a plus, only features whose interfaces are directly castable are considered.
// example 1, without prepending the "+"
if (myNode.isSupported("Events", "3.0")) {
EventTarget evt = (EventTarget) myNode;
// ...
}
// example 2, with the "+"
if (myNode.isSupported("+Events", "3.0")) {
// (the plus sign "+" is irrelevant for the getFeature method itself
// and is ignored by this method anyway)
EventTarget evt = (EventTarget) myNode.getFeature("Events", "3.0");
// ...
} 1.3.7 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 implementations, 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. The DOMImplementationRegistry also provides a getDOMImplementationList method accepting a features string, which is passed to every known DOMImplementationSource, and returns a list of suitable DOMImplementations. Those two methods are the same as the ones found on the DOMImplementationSource interface.
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.
The interfaces within this section are considered fundamental, and must be fully implemented by all conforming implementations of the DOM, including all HTML DOM implementations [DOM Level 2 HTML], unless otherwise specified.
A DOM application may use the DOMImplementation.hasFeature(feature, version) method 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.
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.
An integer indicating the type of error generated.
Note: Other numeric codes are reserved for W3C for possible future use.
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR
DOMString.
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR
Node is inserted somewhere it doesn't belong.
INDEX_SIZE_ERR
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR
INVALID_ACCESS_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
INVALID_MODIFICATION_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
INVALID_STATE_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
NAMESPACE_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
NOT_FOUND_ERR
Node in a context where it does not exist.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR
NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR
Node which does not support data.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
SYNTAX_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 2.
TYPE_MISMATCH_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 3.
VALIDATION_ERR, introduced in DOM Level 3.
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 Validation]. Refer to this specification for further information.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
Node is used in a different document than the one that created it (that doesn't support it).
The DOMStringList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of DOMString values, without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. The items in the DOMStringList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.
length of type unsigned long, readonly
DOMStrings in the list. The range of valid child node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.
contains
Test if a string is part of this
DOMStringList
.
Parametersstr of type DOMString
boolean
true if the string has been found, false otherwise.
No Exceptions
item
Returns the
index
th item in the collection. If
index
is greater than or equal to the number of
DOMString
s in the list, this returns
null
.
Parametersindex of type unsigned long
The DOMString at the indexth position in the DOMStringList, or null if that is not a valid index.
No Exceptions
The NameList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of parallel pairs of name and namespace values (which could be null values), without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. The items in the NameList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.
length of type unsigned long, readonly
length-1 inclusive.
contains
Test if a name is part of this
NameList
.
Return Valueboolean
true if the name has been found, false otherwise.
No Exceptions
containsNS
Test if the pair namespaceURI/name is part of this
NameList
.
ParametersnamespaceURI of type DOMString
name of type DOMString
boolean
true if the pair namespaceURI/name has been found, false otherwise.
No Exceptions
getName
Returns the
index
th name item in the collection.
Parametersindex of type unsigned long
The name at the indexth position in the NameList, or null if there is no name for the specified index or if the index is out of range.
No Exceptions
getNamespaceURI
Returns the
index
th namespaceURI item in the collection.
Parametersindex of type unsigned long
The namespace URI at the indexth position in the NameList, or null if there is no name for the specified index or if the index is out of range.
No Exceptions
The DOMImplementationList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of DOM implementations, without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. The items in the DOMImplementationList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.
length of type unsigned long, readonly
DOMImplementations in the list. The range of valid child node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.
item
Returns the
index
th item in the collection. If
index
is greater than or equal to the number of
DOMImplementation
s in the list, this returns
null
.
Parametersindex of type unsigned long
No Exceptions
This interface permits a DOM implementer to supply one or more implementations, based upon requested features and versions, as specified in DOM Features. Each implemented DOMImplementationSource object is listed in the binding-specific list of available sources so that its DOMImplementation objects are made available.
getDOMImplementation
A method to request the first DOM implementation that supports the specified features.
Parametersfeatures of type DOMString
getDOMImplementationList.
"XML 3.0 Traversal +Events 2.0" will request a DOM implementation that supports the module "XML" for its 3.0 version, a module that support of the "Traversal" module for any version, and the module "Events" for its 2.0 version. The module "Events" must be accessible using the method Node.getFeature() and DOMImplementation.getFeature().
The first DOM implementation that support the desired features, or null if this source has none.
No Exceptions
getDOMImplementationList
A method to request a list of DOM implementations that support the specified features and versions, as specified in
DOM Features.
Parametersfeatures of type DOMString
No Exceptions
The DOMImplementation interface provides a number of methods for performing operations that are independent of any particular instance of the document object model.
createDocument introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates a DOM Document object of the specified type with its document element.
Note that based on the
DocumentType
given to create the document, the implementation may instantiate specialized
Document
objects that support additional features than the "Core", such as "HTML" [
DOM Level 2 HTML]. On the other hand, setting the
DocumentType
after the document was created makes this very unlikely to happen. Alternatively, specialized
Document
creation methods, such as
createHTMLDocument
[
DOM Level 2 HTML], can be used to obtain specific types of
Document
objects.
Return ValueA new Document object with its document element. If the NamespaceURI, qualifiedName, and doctype are null, the returned Document is empty with no document element.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name is not an XML name according to [XML 1.0].
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 if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
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..
ParametersqualifiedName of type DOMString
publicId of type DOMString
systemId of type DOMString
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name is not an XML name according to [XML 1.0].
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
getFeature introduced in DOM Level 3
This method returns a specialized object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, as specified in
DOM Features. The specialized object may also be obtained by using binding-specific casting methods but is not necessarily expected to, as discussed in
Mixed DOM Implementations. This method also allow the implementation to provide specialized objects which do not support the
DOMImplementation
interface.
Parametersfeature of type DOMString
version of type DOMString
Returns an object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, if any, or null if there is no object which implements interfaces associated with that feature. If the DOMObject returned by this method implements the DOMImplementation interface, it must delegate to the primary core DOMImplementation and not return results inconsistent with the primary core DOMImplementation such as hasFeature, getFeature, etc.
No Exceptions
hasFeature
Test if the DOM implementation implements a specific feature and version, as specified in
DOM Features.
Parametersfeature of type DOMString
version of type DOMString
boolean
true if the feature is implemented in the specified version, false otherwise.
No Exceptions
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 Node.insertBefore and Node.appendChild.
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.
doctype of type DocumentType, readonly, modified in DOM Level 3
DocumentType) associated with this document. For XML documents without a document type declaration this returns null. For HTML documents, a DocumentType object may be returned, independently of the presence or absence of document type declaration in the HTML document.
DocumentType node, child node of this Document. This node can be set at document creation time and later changed through the use of child nodes manipulation methods, such as Node.insertBefore, or Node.replaceChild. Note, however, that while some implementations may instantiate different types of Document objects supporting additional features than the "Core", such as "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML], based on the DocumentType specified at creation time, changing it afterwards is very unlikely to result in a change of the features supported.
documentElement of type Element, readonly
documentURI of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
null if undefined or if the Document was created using DOMImplementation.createDocument. No lexical checking is performed when setting this attribute; this could result in a null value returned when using Node.baseURI.
Document supports the feature "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML], the href attribute of the HTML BASE element takes precedence over this attribute when computing Node.baseURI.
domConfig of type DOMConfiguration, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
Document.normalizeDocument() is invoked.
implementation of type DOMImplementation, readonly
DOMImplementation object that handles this document. A DOM application may use objects from multiple implementations.
inputEncoding of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
null when it is not known, such as when the Document was created in memory.
strictErrorChecking of type boolean, introduced in DOM Level 3
false, the implementation is free to not test every possible error case normally defined on DOM operations, and not raise any DOMException on DOM operations or report errors while using Document.normalizeDocument(). In case of error, the behavior is undefined. This attribute is true by default.
xmlEncoding of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
null when unspecified or when it is not known, such as when the Document was created in memory.
xmlStandalone of type boolean, introduced in DOM Level 3
false when unspecified.
Note: No verification is done on the value when setting this attribute. Applications should use Document.normalizeDocument() with the "validate" parameter to verify if the value matches the validity constraint for standalone document declaration as defined in [XML 1.0].
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document does not support the "XML" feature.
xmlVersion of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
"1.0". If this document does not support the "XML" feature, the value is always null. Changing this attribute will affect methods that check for invalid characters in XML names. Application should invoke Document.normalizeDocument() in order to check for invalid characters in the Nodes that are already part of this Document.
DOMImplementation.hasFeature(feature, version) method with parameter values "XMLVersion" and "1.0" (respectively) to determine if an implementation supports [XML 1.0]. DOM applications may use the same method with parameter values "XMLVersion" and "1.1" (respectively) to determine if an implementation supports [XML 1.1]. In both cases, in order to support XML, an implementation must also support the "XML" feature defined in this specification. Document objects supporting a version of the "XMLVersion" feature must not raise a NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR exception for the same version number when using Document.xmlVersion.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the version is set to a value that is not supported by this Document or if this document does not support the "XML" feature.
adoptNode introduced in DOM Level 3
Attempts to adopt a node from another document to this document. If supported, it changes the
ownerDocument
of the source node, its children, as well as the attached attribute nodes if there are any. If the source node has a parent it is first removed from the child list of its parent. This effectively allows moving a subtree from one document to another (unlike
importNode()
which create a copy of the source node instead of moving it). When it fails, applications should use
Document.importNode()
instead. Note that if the adopted node is already part of this document (i.e. the source and target document are the same), this method still has the effect of removing the source node from the child list of its parent, if any. The following list describes the specifics for each type of node.
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 nodes cannot be adopted.
DocumentType nodes cannot be adopted.
Entity nodes cannot be adopted.
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 nodes cannot be adopted.
Note: Since it does not create new nodes unlike the Document.importNode() method, this method does not raise an INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception, and applications should use the Document.normalizeDocument() method to check if an imported name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use.
source of type Node
The adopted node, or null if this operation fails, such as when the source node comes from a different implementation.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the source node is of type DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT_TYPE.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the source node is readonly.
createAttribute
Creates an
Attr
of the given name. Note that the
Attr
instance can then be set on an
Element
using the
setAttributeNode
method.
To create an attribute with a
qualified nameand
namespace URI, use the
createAttributeNS
method.
Parametersname of type DOMString
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.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
createAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates an attribute of the given
qualified nameand
namespace URI.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value
null
as the
namespaceURI
parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
ExceptionsINVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualifiedName is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is a malformed qualified name, 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", if the qualifiedName or its prefix is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/", or if the namespaceURI is "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and neither the qualifiedName nor its prefix is "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.
ExceptionsNOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document.
createComment
Creates a
Comment
node given the specified string.
Parametersdata of type DOMString
No Exceptions
createDocumentFragment
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 nameand
namespace URI, use the
createElementNS
method.
ParameterstagName of type DOMString
A new Element object with the nodeName attribute set to tagName, and localName, prefix, and namespaceURI set to null.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
createElementNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Creates an element of the given
qualified nameand
namespace URI.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value
null
as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
ExceptionsINVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualifiedName is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is a malformed qualified name, 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], or if the qualifiedName or its prefix is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/", or if the namespaceURI is "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and neither the qualifiedName nor its prefix is "xmlns".
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 and 3 do not support any mechanism to resolve namespace prefixes in this case.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document.
createProcessingInstruction
Creates a
ProcessingInstruction
node given the specified name and data strings.
ExceptionsINVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified target is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document.
createTextNode
Creates a
Text
node given the specified string.
Parametersdata of type DOMString
No Exceptions
getElementById introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns the
Element
that has an ID attribute with the given value. If no such element exists, this returns
null
. If more than one element has an ID attribute with that value, what is returned is undefined.
The DOM implementation is expected to use the attribute
Attr.isId
to determine if an attribute is of type ID.
Note: Attributes with the name "ID" or "id" are not of type ID unless so defined.
ParameterselementId of type DOMString
id value for an element.
The matching element or null if there is none.
No Exceptions
getElementsByTagName
Returns a
NodeList
of all the
Elements
in
document orderwith a given tag name and are contained in the document.
Parameterstagname of type DOMString
tagname parameter is case-sensitive, otherwise it depends on the case-sensitivity of the markup language in use.
No Exceptions
getElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2
importNode introduced in DOM Level 2
Imports a node from another document to this document, without altering or removing the source node from the original document; this method creates a new copy of the source node. The returned node has no parent; (
parentNode
is
null
).
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.
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.
deep parameter has no effect on Attr nodes; they always carry their children with them when imported.
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 nodes cannot be imported.
DocumentType nodes cannot be imported.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
publicId and systemId attributes are copied.
deep parameter has no effect on this type of nodes since they cannot have any children.
target and data values from those of the source node.
deep parameter has no effect on this type of nodes since they cannot have any children.
CharacterData copy their data and length attributes from those of the source node.
deep parameter has no effect on these types of nodes since they cannot have any children.
importedNode of type Node
deep of type boolean
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.
The imported node that belongs to this Document.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the type of node being imported is not supported.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if one of the imported names is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute. 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. As a consequence, this method updates the replacement tree of
EntityReference
nodes and normalizes
Text
nodes, as defined in the method
Node.normalize()
.
Otherwise, the actual result depends on the features being set on the
Document.domConfig
object and governing what operations actually take place. Noticeably this method could also make the document
namespace well-formedaccording to the algorithm described in
Namespace Normalization, check the character normalization, remove the
CDATASection
nodes, etc. See
DOMConfiguration
for details.
// Keep in the document the information defined
// in the XML Information Set (Java example)
DOMConfiguration docConfig = myDocument.getDomConfig();
docConfig.setParameter("infoset", Boolean.TRUE);
myDocument.normalizeDocument();
Mutation events, when supported, are generated to reflect the changes occurring on the document.
If errors occur during the invocation of this method, such as an attempt to update a
read-only nodeor a
Node.nodeName
contains an invalid character according to the XML version in use, errors or warnings (
DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR
or
DOMError.SEVERITY_WARNING
) will be reported using the
DOMErrorHandler
object associated with the "
error-handler" parameter. Note this method might also report fatal errors (
DOMError.SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR
) if an implementation cannot recover from an error.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
renameNode introduced in DOM Level 3
Rename an existing node of type
ELEMENT_NODE
or
ATTRIBUTE_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.
If simply changing the name of the given node is not possible, the following operations are performed: a 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 attached to the new node.
When the node being renamed is an
Element
only the specified attributes are moved, default attributes originated from the DTD are updated according to the new element name. In addition, the implementation may update default attributes from other schemas. Applications should use
Document.normalizeDocument()
to guarantee these attributes are up-to-date.
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,
NODE_RENAMED is fired,http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events, DOMElementNameChanged} or {http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events, DOMAttributeNameChanged} is fired.The renamed node. This is either the specified node or the new node that was created to replace the specified node.
ExceptionsNOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised when the type of the specified node is neither ELEMENT_NODE nor ATTRIBUTE_NODE, or if the implementation does not support the renaming of the document element.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the new qualified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised when the specified node was created from a different document than this document.
NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is a malformed qualified name, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, or if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" [XML Namespaces]. Also raised, when the node being renamed is an attribute, if the qualifiedName, or its prefix, is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/".
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.
An integer indicating which type of node this is.
Note: Numeric codes up to 200 are reserved to W3C for possible future use.
ATTRIBUTE_NODE
Attr.
CDATA_SECTION_NODE
CDATASection.
COMMENT_NODE
Comment.
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
DocumentFragment.
DOCUMENT_NODE
Document.
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
DocumentType.
ELEMENT_NODE
Element.
ENTITY_NODE
Entity.
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
EntityReference.
NOTATION_NODE
Notation.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
ProcessingInstruction.
TEXT_NODE
Text node.
The values of nodeName, nodeValue, and attributes vary according to the node type as follows:
A bitmask indicating the relative document position of a node with respect to another node.
If the two nodes being compared are the same node, then no flags are set on the return.
Otherwise, the order of two nodes is determined by looking for common containers -- containers which contain both. A node directly contains any child nodes. A node also directly contains any other nodes attached to it such as attributes contained in an element or entities and notations contained in a document type. Nodes contained in contained nodes are also contained, but less-directly as the number of intervening containers increases.
If there is no common container node, then the order is based upon order between the root container of each node that is in no container. In this case, the result is disconnected and implementation-specific. This result is stable as long as these outer-most containing nodes remain in memory and are not inserted into some other containing node. This would be the case when the nodes belong to different documents or fragments, and cloning the document or inserting a fragment might change the order.
If one of the nodes being compared contains the other node, then the container precedes the contained node, and reversely the contained node follows the container. For example, when comparing an element against its own attribute or child, the element node precedes its attribute node and its child node, which both follow it.
If neither of the previous cases apply, then there exists a most-direct container common to both nodes being compared. In this case, the order is determined based upon the two determining nodes directly contained in this most-direct common container that either are or contain the corresponding nodes being compared.
If these two determining nodes are both child nodes, then the natural DOM order of these determining nodes within the containing node is returned as the order of the corresponding nodes. This would be the case, for example, when comparing two child elements of the same element.
If one of the two determining nodes is a child node and the other is not, then the corresponding node of the child node follows the corresponding node of the non-child node. This would be the case, for example, when comparing an attribute of an element with a child element of the same element.
If neither of the two determining node is a child node and one determining node has a greater value of nodeType than the other, then the corresponding node precedes the other. This would be the case, for example, when comparing an entity of a document type against a notation of the same document type.
If neither of the two determining node is a child node and nodeType is the same for both determining nodes, then an implementation-dependent order between the determining nodes is returned. This order is stable as long as no nodes of the same nodeType are inserted into or removed from the direct container. This would be the case, for example, when comparing two attributes of the same element, and inserting or removing additional attributes might change the order between existing attributes.
DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINED_BY
DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINS
DOCUMENT_POSITION_DISCONNECTED
DOCUMENT_POSITION_FOLLOWING
DOCUMENT_POSITION_IMPLEMENTATION_SPECIFIC
DOCUMENT_POSITION_PRECEDING
attributes of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
NamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it is an Element) or null otherwise.
baseURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
null if the implementation wasn't able to obtain an absolute URI. This value is computed as described in Base URIs. 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.
childNodes of type NodeList, readonly
NodeList that contains all children of this node. If there are no children, this is a NodeList containing no nodes.
firstChild of type Node, readonly
null.
lastChild of type Node, readonly
null.
localName of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as Document.createElement(), this is always null.
namespaceURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
null if it is unspecified (see XML Namespaces).
ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as Document.createElement(), 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
null.
nodeName of type DOMString, readonly
nodeType of type unsigned short, readonly
nodeValue of type DOMString
null, setting it has no effect, including if the node is read-only.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly and if it is not defined to be null.
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
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
Attr, Document, DocumentFragment, Entity, and Notation may have a parent. However, if a node has just been created and not yet added to the tree, or if it has been removed from the tree, this is null.
prefix of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 2
null if it is unspecified. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect, including if the node is read-only.
nodeName attribute, which holds the qualified name, as well as the tagName and name attributes of the Element and Attr interfaces, when applicable.
null makes it unspecified, setting it to an empty string is implementation dependent.
namespaceURI and localName do not change.
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.
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified prefix contains an illegal character according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
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
null.
textContent of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 3
null, setting it has no effect. On setting, any possible children this node may have are removed and, if it the new string is not empty or null, replaced by a single Text node containing the string this attribute is set to.
Text.isElementContentWhitespace). Similarly, on setting, no parsing is performed either, the input string is taken as pure textual content.
textContent attribute value of every child node, excluding COMMENT_NODE and PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE nodes. This is the empty string if the node has no children. TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE nodeValue DOCUMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE, NOTATION_NODE null Exceptions on setting
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.
Exceptions on retrievalDOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR: Raised when it would return more characters than fit in a DOMString variable on the implementation platform.
appendChild modified in DOM Level 3
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.
ParametersnewChild of type Node
DocumentFragment object, the entire contents of the document fragment are moved into the child list of this node
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, or if this node is of type Document and the DOM application attempts to append 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 previous parent of the node being inserted is readonly.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: if the newChild node is a child of the Document node, this exception might be raised if the DOM implementation doesn't support the removal of the DocumentType child or Element child.
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
Attr
directly, as opposed to be cloned as part of an
Element
cloning operation, returns a specified attribute (
specified
is
true
). Cloning an
Attr
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.
Parametersdeep of type boolean
true, recursively clone the subtree under the specified node; if false, clone only the node itself (and its attributes, if it is an Element).
No Exceptions
compareDocumentPosition introduced in DOM Level 3
Compares the reference node, i.e. the node on which this method is being called, with a node, i.e. the one passed as a parameter, with regard to their position in the document and according to the
document order.
Parametersother of type Node
unsigned short
Returns how the node is positioned relatively to the reference node.
ExceptionsNOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: when the compared nodes are from different DOM implementations that do not coordinate to return consistent implementation-specific results.
getFeature introduced in DOM Level 3
This method returns a specialized object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, as specified in
DOM Features. The specialized object may also be obtained by using binding-specific casting methods but is not necessarily expected to, as discussed in
Mixed DOM Implementations. This method also allow the implementation to provide specialized objects which do not support the
Node
interface.
Parametersfeature of type DOMString
version of type DOMString
Returns an object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, if any, or null if there is no object which implements interfaces associated with that feature. If the DOMObject returned by this method implements the Node interface, it must delegate to the primary core Node and not return results inconsistent with the primary core Node such as 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.
Parameterskey of type DOMString
No Exceptions
hasAttributes introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns whether this node (if it is an element) has any attributes.
Return Valueboolean
Returns true if this node has any attributes, false otherwise.
No Parameters
No Exceptions
hasChildNodes
Returns whether this node has any children.
Return Valueboolean
Returns 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.
Note: Inserting a node before itself is implementation dependent.
ParametersnewChild of type Node
refChild of type Node
The node being inserted.
ExceptionsHIERARCHY_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 is 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 is of type Document, this exception might be raised if the DOM implementation doesn't support the insertion of a DocumentType or Element node.
isDefaultNamespace introduced in DOM Level 3
This method checks if the specified
namespaceURI
is the default namespace or not.
ParametersnamespaceURI of type DOMString
boolean
Returns true if the specified namespaceURI is the default namespace, false otherwise.
No Exceptions
isEqualNode introduced in DOM Level 3
Tests whether two nodes are equal.
This method tests for equality of nodes, not sameness (i.e., whether the two nodes are references to the same object) which can be tested with
Node.isSameNode()
. All nodes that are the same will also be equal, though the reverse may not be true.
Two nodes are equal if and only if the following conditions are satisfied:
nodeName, localName, namespaceURI, prefix, nodeValue. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and are character for character identical.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.childNodes NodeLists are equal. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and contain equal nodes at the same index. Note that normalization can affect equality; to avoid this, nodes should be normalized before being compared.For two
DocumentType
nodes to be equal, the following conditions must also be satisfied:
publicId, systemId, internalSubset.entities NamedNodeMaps are equal.notations NamedNodeMaps are equal.On the other hand, the following do not affect equality: the
ownerDocument
,
baseURI
, and
parentNode
attributes, the
specified
attribute for
Attr
nodes, the
schemaTypeInfo
attribute for
Attr
and
Element
nodes, the
Text.isElementContentWhitespace
attribute for
Text
nodes, as well as any user data or event listeners registered on the nodes.
Note: As a general rule, anything not mentioned in the description above is not significant in consideration of equality checking. Note that future versions of this specification may take into account more attributes and implementations conform to this specification are expected to be updated accordingly.
Parametersarg of type Node
boolean
Returns true if the nodes are equal, false otherwise.
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.
Parametersother of type Node
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, as specified in
DOM Features.
Parametersfeature of type DOMString
version of type DOMString
boolean
Returns true if the specified feature is supported on this node, false otherwise.
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 Lookupfor details on the algorithm used by this method.
Parametersprefix of type DOMString
null, the method will return the default namespace URI if any.
Returns the associated namespace URI or null if none is found.
No Exceptions
lookupPrefix introduced in DOM Level 3
Look up the prefix associated to the given namespace URI, starting from this node. The default namespace declarations are ignored by this method.
See
Namespace Prefix Lookupfor details on the algorithm used by this method.
ParametersnamespaceURI of type DOMString
Returns an associated namespace prefix if found 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
normalize modified in DOM Level 3
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. If the parameter "
normalize-characters" of the
DOMConfiguration
object attached to the
Node.ownerDocument
is
true
, this method will also fully normalize the characters of the
Text
nodes.
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.
ParametersoldChild of type Node
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 is 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.
Note: Replacing a node with itself is implementation dependent.
ParametersnewChild of type Node
oldChild of type Node
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, or if this node is of type Document and the result of the replacement operation would add a second DocumentType or Element on the Document 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 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 is 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.
Parameterskey of type DOMString
data of type DOMUserData
null to remove any existing association to that key.
handler of type UserDataHandler
null.
Returns the DOMUserData previously associated to the given key on this node, or null if there was none.
No Exceptions
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.
length of type unsigned long, readonly
length-1 inclusive.
item
Returns the
index
th item in the collection. If
index
is greater than or equal to the number of nodes in the list, this returns
null
.
Parametersindex of type unsigned long
The node at the indexth position in the NodeList, or null if that is not a valid index.
No Exceptions
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.
length of type unsigned long, readonly
0 to length-1 inclusive.
getNamedItem
Retrieves a node specified by name.
Parametersname of type DOMString
nodeName of a node to retrieve.
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.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Return ValueA Node (of any type) with the specified local name and namespace URI, or null if they do not identify any node in this map.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
item
Returns the
index
th item in the map. If
index
is greater than or equal to the number of nodes in this map, this returns
null
.
Parametersindex of type unsigned long
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.
Parametersname of type DOMString
nodeName of the node to remove.
The node removed from this map if a node with such a name exists.
ExceptionsNOT_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.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Return ValueThe node removed from this map if a node with such a local name and namespace URI exists.
ExceptionsNOT_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.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
setNamedItem
Adds a node using its
nodeName
attribute. If a node with that name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing a node by itself has no effect.
As the
nodeName
attribute is used to derive the name which the node must be stored under, multiple nodes of certain types (those that have a "special" string value) cannot be stored as the names would clash. This is seen as preferable to allowing nodes to be aliased.
Parametersarg of type Node
nodeName attribute.
If the new Node replaces an existing node the replaced Node is returned, otherwise null is returned.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if arg was created from a different document than the one that created this map.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly.
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if arg is an Attr that is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if an attempt is made to add a node doesn't belong in this NamedNodeMap. Examples would include trying to insert something other than an Attr node into an Element's map of attributes, or a non-Entity node into the DocumentType's map of Entities.
setNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a node using its
namespaceURI
and
localName
. If a node with that namespace URI and that local name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing a node by itself has no effect.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Parametersarg of type Node
namespaceURI and localName attributes.
If the new Node replaces an existing node the replaced Node is returned, otherwise null is returned.
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: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
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.
data of type DOMString
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.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.
Exceptions on retrievalDOMSTRING_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
data and the substringData method below. This may have the value zero, i.e., CharacterData nodes may be empty.
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.
ExceptionsNO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.
No Return Value
deleteData
Remove a range of
16-bit unitsfrom the node. Upon success,
data
and
length
reflect the change.
Parametersoffset of type unsigned long
count of type unsigned long
offset and count exceeds length then all 16-bit units from offset to the end of the data are deleted.
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified 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 unitoffset.
Parametersoffset of type unsigned long
arg of type DOMString
DOMString to insert.
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 unitoffset with the specified string.
Parametersoffset of type unsigned long
count of type unsigned long
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
DOMString with which the range must be replaced.
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.
Parametersoffset of type unsigned long
count of type unsigned long
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.
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.
The Attr interface represents an attribute in an Element object. Typically the allowable values for the attribute are defined in a schema associated with the document.
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 Node.nodeValue attribute on the Attr instance can also be used to retrieve the string version of the attribute's value(s).
If the attribute was not explicitly given a value in the instance document but has a default value provided by the schema associated with the document, an attribute node will be created with specified set to false. Removing attribute nodes for which a default value is defined in the schema generates a new attribute node with the default value and specified set to false. If validation occurred while invoking Document.normalizeDocument(), attribute nodes with specified equals to false are recomputed according to the default attribute values provided by the schema. If no default value is associate with this attribute in the schema, the attribute node is discarded.
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).
The DOM Core represents all attribute values as simple strings, even if the DTD or schema associated with the document declares them of some specific type such as tokenized.
The way attribute value normalization is performed by the DOM implementation depends on how much the implementation knows about the schema in use. Typically, the value and nodeValue attributes of an Attr node initially returns the normalized value given by the parser. It is also the case after Document.normalizeDocument() is called (assuming the right options have been set). But this may not be the case after mutation, 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 references are involved, given that they are not represented in the DOM and they impact attribute value normalization. On the other hand, if the implementation knows about the schema in use when the attribute value is changed, and it is of a different type than CDATA, it may normalize it again at that time. This is especially true of specialized DOM implementations, such as SVG DOM implementations, which store attribute values in an internal form different from a string.
The following table gives some examples of the relations between the attribute value in the original document (parsed attribute), the value as exposed in the DOM, and the serialization of the value:
Examples Parsed attribute value InitialAttr.value Serialized attribute value Character reference
"x²=5"
"x²=5"
"x²=5"Built-in character entity
"y<6"
"y<6"
"y<6"Literal newline between
"x=5 y=6"
"x=5 y=6"
"x=5 y=6"Normalized newline between
"x=5 y=6"
"x=5 y=6"
"x=5 y=6"Entity
e with literal newline
<!ENTITY e '... ...'> [...]> "x=5&e;y=6"Dependent on Implementation and Load Options Dependent on Implementation and Load/Save Options
isId of type boolean, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
ownerElement of this attribute can be retrieved using the method Document.getElementById. The implementation could use several ways to determine if an attribute node is known to contain an identifier:
Document.normalizeDocument(), the post-schema-validation infoset contributions (PSVI contributions) values are used to determine if this attribute is a schema-determined ID attribute using the schema-determined ID definition in [XPointer].Document.normalizeDocument(), the infoset [type definition] value is used to determine if this attribute is a DTD-determined ID attribute using the DTD-determined ID definition in [XPointer].Element.setIdAttribute(), Element.setIdAttributeNS(), or Element.setIdAttributeNode(), i.e. it is an user-determined ID attribute;
Note: XPointer framework (see section 3.2 in [XPointer]) consider the DOM user-determined ID attribute as being part of the XPointer externally-determined ID definition.
Document.normalizeDocument(), all user-determined ID attributes are reset and all attribute nodes ID information are then reevaluated in accordance to the schema used. As a consequence, if the Attr.schemaTypeInfo attribute contains an ID type, isId will always return true.
name of type DOMString, readonly
Node.localName is different from null, this attribute is a qualified name.
ownerElement of type Element, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
Element node this attribute is attached to or null if this attribute is not in use.
schemaTypeInfo of type TypeInfo, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
Document.normalizeDocument(), schemaTypeInfo may not be reliable if the node was moved.
specified of type boolean, readonly
True if this attribute was explicitly given a value in the instance document, false otherwise. If the application changed the value of this attribute node (even if it ends up having the same value as the default value) then it is set to true. The implementation may handle attributes with default values from other schemas similarly but applications should use Document.normalizeDocument() to guarantee this information is up-to-date.
value of type DOMString
getAttribute on the Element interface.
Text node with the unparsed contents of the string, i.e. any characters that an XML processor would recognize as markup are instead treated as literal text. See also the method Element.setAttribute().
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.
The Element interface represents an element in an HTML or XML document. Elements may have attributes associated with them; since the Element interface inherits from Node, the generic Node interface attribute attributes may be used to retrieve the set of all attributes for an element. There are methods on the Element interface to retrieve either an Attr object by name or an attribute value by name. In XML, where an attribute value may contain entity references, an Attr object should be retrieved to examine the possibly fairly complex sub-tree representing the attribute value. On the other hand, in HTML, where all attributes have simple string values, methods to directly access an attribute value can safely be used as a convenience.
Note: In DOM Level 2, the method normalize is inherited from the Node interface where it was moved.
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)
raises(DOMException);
// 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)
raises(DOMException);
// 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)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean hasAttribute(in DOMString name);
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:
boolean hasAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
readonly attribute TypeInfo schemaTypeInfo;
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
void setIdAttribute(in DOMString name,
in boolean isId)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
void setIdAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
in DOMString localName,
in boolean isId)
raises(DOMException);
// Introduced in DOM Level 3:
void setIdAttributeNode(in Attr idAttr,
in boolean isId)
raises(DOMException);
};
schemaTypeInfo of type TypeInfo, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
tagName of type DOMString, readonly
Node.localName is different from null, this attribute is a qualified name. 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.
getAttribute
Retrieves an attribute value by name.
Parametersname of type 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.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value
null
as the
namespaceURI
parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Return ValueThe Attr value as a string, or the empty string if that attribute does not have a specified or default value.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
getAttributeNode
Retrieves an attribute node by name.
To retrieve an attribute node by qualified name and namespace URI, use the
getAttributeNodeNS
method.
Parametersname of type DOMString
nodeName) of the attribute to retrieve.
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.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value
null
as the
namespaceURI
parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Return ValueThe Attr node with the specified attribute local name and namespace URI or null if there is no such attribute.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
getElementsByTagName
Returns a
NodeList
of all
descendantElements
with a given tag name, in
document order.
Parametersname of type DOMString
A list of matching Element nodes.
No Exceptions
getElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Returns a
NodeList
of all the
descendantElements
with a given local name and namespace URI in
document order.
ParametersnamespaceURI of type DOMString
localName of type DOMString
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
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.
Parametersname of type DOMString
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.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value
null
as the
namespaceURI
parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
Return Valueboolean
true if an attribute with the given local name and namespace URI is specified or has a default value on this element, false otherwise.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
removeAttribute
Removes an attribute by name. If a default value for the removed attribute is defined in the DTD, a new attribute immediately appears with the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable. The implementation may handle default values from other schemas similarly but applications should use
Document.normalizeDocument()
to guarantee this information is up-to-date.
If no attribute with this name is found, this method has no effect.
To remove an attribute by local name and namespace URI, use the
removeAttributeNS
method.
Parametersname of type DOMString
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 a default value for the removed attribute is defined in the DTD, a new attribute immediately appears with the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable. The implementation may handle default values from other schemas similarly but applications should use
Document.normalizeDocument()
to guarantee this information is up-to-date.
If no attribute with this local name and namespace URI is found, this method has no effect.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value
null
as the
namespaceURI
parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
ExceptionsNO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
No Return Value
removeAttributeNode
Removes the specified attribute node. If a default value for the removed
Attr
node is defined in the DTD, a new node immediately appears with the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable. The implementation may handle default values from other schemas similarly but applications should use
Document.normalizeDocument()
to guarantee this information is up-to-date.
ParametersoldAttr of type Attr
Attr node to remove from the attribute list.
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.
Parametersname of type DOMString
value of type DOMString
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
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.
ExceptionsINVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use specified in the Document.xmlVersion attribute.
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", if the qualifiedName or its prefix is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/", or if the namespaceURI is "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/" and neither the qualifiedName nor its prefix is "xmlns".
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
No Return Value
setAttributeNode
Adds a new attribute node. If an attribute with that name (
nodeName
) is already present in the element, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing an attribute node by itself has no effect.
To add a new attribute node with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the
setAttributeNodeNS
method.
ParametersnewAttr of type Attr
Attr node to add to the attribute list.
If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute, the replaced Attr node is returned, otherwise null is returned.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newAttr was created from a different document than the one that created the element.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if newAttr is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.
setAttributeNodeNS introduced in DOM Level 2
Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that local name and that namespace URI is already present in the element, it is replaced by the new one. Replacing an attribute node by itself has no effect.
Per [
XML Namespaces], applications must use the value
null
as the
namespaceURI
parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.
ParametersnewAttr of type Attr
Attr node to add to the attribute list.
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.
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: May be raised if the implementation does not support the feature "XML" and the language exposed through the Document does not support XML Namespaces (such as [HTML 4.01]).
setIdAttribute introduced in DOM Level 3
If the parameter
isId
is
true
, this method declares the specified attribute to be a
user-determined ID attribute. This affects the value of
Attr.isId
and the behavior of
Document.getElementById
, but does not change any schema that may be in use, in particular this does not affect the
Attr.schemaTypeInfo
of the specified
Attr
node. Use the value
false
for the parameter
isId
to undeclare an attribute for being a
user-determined ID attribute.
To specify an attribute by local name and namespace URI, use the
setIdAttributeNS
method.
Parametersname of type DOMString
isId of type boolean
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if the specified node is not an attribute of this element.
No Return Value
setIdAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 3
If the parameter
isId
is
true
, this method declares the specified attribute to be a
user-determined ID attribute. This affects the value of
Attr.isId
and the behavior of
Document.getElementById
, but does not change any schema that may be in use, in particular this does not affect the
Attr.schemaTypeInfo
of the specified
Attr
node. Use the value
false
for the parameter
isId
to undeclare an attribute for being a
user-determined ID attribute.
ExceptionsNO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if the specified node is not an attribute of this element.
No Return Value
setIdAttributeNode introduced in DOM Level 3
If the parameter
isId
is
true
, this method declares the specified attribute to be a
user-determined ID attribute. This affects the value of
Attr.isId
and the behavior of
Document.getElementById
, but does not change any schema that may be in use, in particular this does not affect the
Attr.schemaTypeInfo
of the specified
Attr
node. Use the value
false
for the parameter
isId
to undeclare an attribute for being a
user-determined ID attribute.
ParametersidAttr of type Attr
isId of type boolean
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if the specified node is not an attribute of this element.
No Return Value
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 Node.normalize() method merges any such adjacent Text objects into a single node for each block of text.
No lexical check is done on the content of a Text node and, depending on its position in the document, some characters must be escaped during serialization using character references; e.g. the characters "<&" if the textual content is part of an element or of an attribute, the character sequence "]]>" when part of an element, the quotation mark character " or the apostrophe character ' when part of an attribute.
isElementContentWhitespace of type boolean, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
Document.normalizeDocument().
wholeText of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
Text nodes logically-adjacent text nodes to this node, concatenated in document order.
wholeText on the Text node that contains "bar" returns "barfoo", while on the Text node that contains "foo" it returns "barfoo".
replaceWholeText introduced in DOM Level 3
Replaces the text of the current node and all
logically-adjacent text nodeswith the specified text. All
logically-adjacent text nodesare removed including the current node unless it was the recipient of the replacement text.
This method returns the node which received the replacement text. The returned node is:
null, when the replacement text is the empty string;Text node of the same type (Text or CDATASection) as the current node inserted at the location of the replacement.For instance, in the above example calling
replaceWholeText
on the
Text
node that contains "bar" with "yo" in argument results in the following:
Figure: barTextNode.replaceWholeText("yo") modifies the textual content of barTextNode with "yo" [SVG 1.0 version]
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
.
For instance, in the example below calling
replaceWholeText
on the
Text
node that contains "bar" fails, because the
EntityReference
node "ent" contains an
Element
node which cannot be removed.
Figure: barTextNode.replaceWholeText("yo") raises a NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR DOMException [SVG 1.0 version]
Parameterscontent of type DOMString
Text node.
The Text node created with the specified content.
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
siblingof the original node. When the
offset
is equal to the length of this node, the new node has no data.
Parametersoffset of type unsigned long
0.
The new node, of the same type as this node.
ExceptionsINDEX_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.
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.
No lexical check is done on the content of a comment and it is therefore possible to have the character sequence "--" (double-hyphen) in the content, which is illegal in a comment per section 2.5 of [XML 1.0]. The presence of this character sequence must generate a fatal error during serialization.
The TypeInfo interface represents a type referenced from Element or Attr nodes, specified in the schemas associated with the document. The type is a pair of a namespace URI and name properties, and depends on the document's schema.
If the document's schema is an XML DTD [XML 1.0], the values are computed as follows:
Attr node, typeNamespace is "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml" and typeName represents the [attribute type] property in the [XML Information Set]. If there is no declaration for the attribute, typeNamespace and typeName are null.Element node, typeNamespace and typeName are null.If the document's schema is an XML Schema [XML Schema Part 1], the values are computed as follows using the post-schema-validation infoset contributions (also called PSVI contributions):
null.
Note: At the time of writing, the XML Schema specification does not require exposing the declared type. Thus, DOM implementations might choose not to provide type information if validity is not valid.
Note: Other schema languages are outside the scope of the W3C and therefore should define how to represent their type systems using TypeInfo.
These are the available values for the derivationMethod parameter used by the method TypeInfo.isDerivedFrom(). It is a set of possible types of derivation, and the values represent bit positions. If a bit in the derivationMethod parameter is set to 1, the corresponding type of derivation will be taken into account when evaluating the derivation between the reference type definition and the other type definition. When using the isDerivedFrom method, combining all of them in the derivationMethod parameter is equivalent to invoking the method for each of them separately and combining the results with the OR boolean function. This specification only defines the type of derivation for XML Schema.
In addition to the types of derivation listed below, please note that:
xsd:anyType.xsd:anySimpleType by restriction.xsd:anySimpleType by restriction.DERIVATION_EXTENSION
DERIVATION_LIST
DERIVATION_RESTRICTION or DERIVATION_EXTENSION, T2 is derived from the other type definition by DERIVATION_RESTRICTION, T1 has {variety} list, and T2 is the {item type definition}. Note that T1 could be the same as the reference type definition, and T2 could be the same as the other type definition.
DERIVATION_RESTRICTION
DERIVATION_UNION
DERIVATION_RESTRICTION or DERIVATION_EXTENSION, T2 is derived from the other type definition by DERIVATION_RESTRICTION, T1 has {variety} union, and one of the {member type definitions} is T2. Note that T1 could be the same as the reference type definition, and T2 could be the same as the other type definition.
typeName of type DOMString, readonly
null if unknown.
typeNamespace of type DOMString, readonly
null if the element does not have declaration or if no namespace information is available.
isDerivedFrom
This method returns if there is a derivation between the reference type definition, i.e. the
TypeInfo
on which the method is being called, and the other type definition, i.e. the one passed as parameters.
ParameterstypeNamespaceArg of type DOMString
typeNameArg of type DOMString
derivationMethod of type unsigned long
boolean
If the document's schema is a DTD or no schema is associated with the document, this method will always return false.
If the document's schema is an XML Schema, the method will true if the reference type definition is derived from the other type definition according to the derivation parameter. If the value of the parameter is 0 (no bit is set to 1 for the derivationMethod parameter), the method will return true if the other type definition can be reached by recursing any combination of {base type definition}, {item type definition}, or {member type definitions} from the reference type definition.
No Exceptions
When associating an object to a key on a node using Node.setUserData() the application can provide a handler that gets called when the node the object is associated to is being cloned, imported, or renamed. 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.
An integer indicating the type of operation being performed on a node.
NODE_ADOPTED
Document.adoptNode().
NODE_CLONED
Node.cloneNode().
NODE_DELETED
Note: This may not be supported or may not be reliable in certain environments, such as Java, where the implementation has no real control over when objects are actually deleted.
NODE_IMPORTED
Document.importNode().
NODE_RENAMED
Document.renameNode().
handle
This method is called whenever the node for which this handler is registered is imported or cloned.
DOM applications must not raise exceptions in a
UserDataHandler
. The effect of throwing exceptions from the handler is DOM implementation dependent.
Parametersoperation of type unsigned short
key of type DOMString
data of type DOMUserData
src of type Node
null when the node is being deleted.
dst of type Node
null.
No Return Value
No Exceptions
DOMError is an interface that describes an error.
An integer indicating the severity of the error.
SEVERITY_ERROR
DOMError is error. A SEVERITY_ERROR may not cause the processing to stop if the error can be recovered, unless DOMErrorHandler.handleError() returns false.
SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR
DOMError is fatal error. A SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR will cause the normal processing to stop. The return value of DOMErrorHandler.handleError() is ignored unless the implementation chooses to continue, in which case the behavior becomes undefined.
SEVERITY_WARNING
DOMError is warning. A SEVERITY_WARNING will not cause the processing to stop, unless DOMErrorHandler.handleError() returns false.
location of type DOMLocator, readonly
message of type DOMString, readonly
relatedData of type DOMObject, readonly
DOMError.type dependent data if any.
relatedException of type DOMObject, readonly
severity of type unsigned short, readonly
SEVERITY_WARNING, SEVERITY_ERROR, or SEVERITY_FATAL_ERROR.
type of type DOMString, readonly
DOMString indicating which related data is expected in relatedData. Users should refer to the specification of the error in order to find its DOMString type and relatedData definitions if any.
Note: As an example, Document.normalizeDocument() does generate warnings when the "split-cdata-sections" parameter is in use. Therefore, the method generates a SEVERITY_WARNING with type "cdata-sections-splitted" and the first CDATASection node in document order resulting from the split is returned by the relatedData attribute.
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). A DOMErrorHandler object can be attached to a Document using the "error-handler" on the DOMConfiguration interface. If more than one error needs to be reported during an operation, the sequence and numbers of the errors passed to the error handler are implementation dependent.
The application that is using the DOM implementation is expected to implement this interface.
handleError
This method is called on the error handler when an error occurs.
If an exception is thrown from this method, it is considered to be equivalent of returning
true
.
Parameterserror of type DOMError
handleError method.
boolean
If the handleError method returns false, the DOM implementation should stop the current processing when possible. If the method returns true, the processing may continue depending on DOMError.severity.
No Exceptions
DOMLocator is an interface that describes a location (e.g. where an error occurred).
byteOffset of type long, readonly
-1 if there is no byte offset available.
columnNumber of type long, readonly
-1 if there is no column number available.
lineNumber of type long, readonly
-1 if there is no column number available.
relatedNode of type Node, readonly
null if no node is available.
uri of type DOMString, readonly
null if no URI is available.
utf16Offset of type long, readonly
-1 if there is no UTF-16 offset available.
The DOMConfiguration interface represents the configuration of a document and maintains a table of recognized parameters. Using the configuration, it is possible to change Document.normalizeDocument() behavior, such as replacing the CDATASection nodes with Text nodes or specifying the type of the schema that must be used when the validation of the Document is requested. DOMConfiguration objects are also used in [DOM Level 3 Load and Save] in the DOMParser and DOMSerializer interfaces.
The parameter names used by the DOMConfiguration object are defined throughout the DOM Level 3 specifications. Names are case-insensitive. To avoid possible conflicts, as a convention, names referring to parameters defined outside the DOM specification should be made unique. Because parameters are exposed as properties in the ECMAScript Language Binding, names are recommended to follow the section "5.16 Identifiers" of [Unicode] with the addition of the character '-' (HYPHEN-MINUS) but it is not enforced by the DOM implementation. DOM Level 3 Core Implementations are required to recognize all parameters defined in this specification. Some parameter values may also be required to be supported by the implementation. Refer to the definition of the parameter to know if a value must be supported or not.
Note: Parameters are similar to features and properties used in SAX2 [SAX].
The following list of parameters defined in the DOM:
"canonical-form"
true
DocumentType node (if any) from the tree, or removing superfluous namespace declarations from each element. Note that this is limited to what can be represented in the DOM; in particular, there is no way to specify the order of the attributes in the DOM. In addition,
true will also set the state of the parameters listed below. Later changes to the state of one of those parameters will revert "canonical-form" back to false.
false: "entities", "normalize-characters", "cdata-sections".
true: "namespaces", "namespace-declarations", "well-formed", "element-content-whitespace".
false
"cdata-sections"
true
CDATASection nodes in the document.
false
CDATASection nodes in the document into Text nodes. The new Text node is then combined with any adjacent Text node.
"check-character-normalization"
true
DOMError.type equals to "check-character-normalization-failure" is issued.
false
"comments"
true
Comment nodes in the document.
false
Comment nodes in the document.
"datatype-normalization"
true
true. Having this parameter activated when "validate" is false has no effect and no schema-normalization will happen.
Note: Since the document contains the result of the XML 1.0 processing, this parameter does not apply to attribute value normalization as defined in section 3.3.3 of [XML 1.0] and is only meant for schema languages other than Document Type Definition (DTD).
false
"element-content-whitespace"
true
false
Text nodes that contain whitespaces in element content, as described in [element content whitespace]. The implementation is expected to use the attribute Text.isElementContentWhitespace to determine if a Text node should be discarded or not.
"entities"
true
EntityReference nodes in the document.
false
EntityReference nodes from the document, putting the entity expansions directly in their place. Text nodes are normalized, as defined in Node.normalize. Only unexpanded entity references are kept in the document.
Note: This parameter does not affect Entity nodes.
"error-handler"
DOMErrorHandler object. If an error is encountered in the document, the implementation will call back the DOMErrorHandler registered using this parameter. The implementation may provide a default DOMErrorHandler object.
DOMError.relatedData will contain the closest node to where the error occurred. If the implementation is unable to determine the node where the error occurs, DOMError.relatedData will contain the Document node. Mutations to the document from within an error handler will result in implementation dependent behavior.
"infoset"
true
false: "validate-if-schema", "entities", "datatype-normalization", "cdata-sections".
true: "namespace-declarations", "well-formed", "element-content-whitespace", "comments", "namespaces".
getParameter returns true only if the individual parameters specified above are appropriately set.
false
infoset to false has no effect.
"namespaces"
true
false
"namespace-declarations"
false.
true
false
Node.prefix) are retained even if this parameter is set to false.
"normalize-characters"
true
false
"schema-location"
DOMString object containing a list of URIs, separated by whitespaces (characters matching the nonterminal production S defined in section 2.3 [XML 1.0]), that represents the schemas against which validation should occur, i.e. the current schema. The types of schemas referenced in this list must match the type specified with schema-type, otherwise the behavior of an implementation is undefined.
schemaLocation attribute) in a schema document (i.e. using schema import mechanisms) share the same targetNamespace, the schema specified by the user using this property will be used. If two schemas specified using this property share the same targetNamespace or have no namespace, the behavior is implementation dependent.
null.
Note: The "schema-location" parameter is ignored unless the "schema-type" parameter value is set. It is strongly recommended that Document.documentURI will be set so that an implementation can successfully resolve any external entities referenced.
"schema-type"
DOMString object containing an absolute URI and representing the type of the schema language used to validate a document against. Note that no lexical checking is done on the absolute URI.
null.
Note: For XML Schema [XML Schema Part 1], applications must use the value "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema". For XML DTD [XML 1.0], applications must use the value "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml". Other schema languages are outside the scope of the W3C and therefore should recommend an absolute URI in order to use this method.
"split-cdata-sections"
true
DOMError.type equals to "cdata-sections-splitted" and DOMError.relatedData equals to the first CDATASection node in document order resulting from the split.
false
CDATASection contains an unrepresentable character.
"validate"
true
true.
Attr.specified equals to false, as specified in the description of the Attr interface;Text.isElementContentWhitespace for all Text nodes;Attr.isId for all Attr nodes;Element.schemaTypeInfo and Attr.schemaTypeInfo.Note: "validate-if-schema" and "validate" are mutually exclusive, setting one of them to true will set the other one to false. Applications should also consider setting the parameter "well-formed" to true, which is the default for that option, when validating the document.
false
true.
"validate-if-schema"
true
true.
Note: "validate-if-schema" and "validate" are mutually exclusive, setting one of them to true will set the other one to false.
false
true.
"well-formed"
true
Document.xmlVersion:
Node.nodeName contains invalid characters according to its node type and generate a DOMError of type "wf-invalid-character-in-node-name", with a DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR severity, if necessary;Attr, Element, Comment, Text, CDATASection nodes for invalid characters and generate a DOMError of type "wf-invalid-character", with a DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR severity, if necessary;ProcessingInstruction nodes for invalid characters and generate a DOMError of type "wf-invalid-character", with a DOMError.SEVERITY_ERROR severity, if necessary;false
The resolution of the system identifiers associated with entities is done using Document.documentURI. However, when the feature "LS" defined in [DOM Level 3 Load and Save] is supported by the DOM implementation, the parameter "resource-resolver" can also be used on DOMConfiguration objects attached to Document nodes. If this parameter is set, Document.normalizeDocument() will invoke the resource resolver instead of using Document.documentURI.
parameterNames of type DOMStringList, readonly
DOMConfiguration object and for which at least one value can be set by the application. Note that this list can also contain parameter names defined outside this specification.
canSetParameter
Check if setting a parameter to a specific value is supported.
Parametersname of type DOMString
value of type DOMUserData
null, the returned value is true.
boolean
true if the parameter could be successfully set to the specified value, or false if the parameter is not recognized or the requested value is not supported. This does not change the current value of the parameter itself.
No Exceptions
getParameter
Return the value of a parameter if known.
Parametersname of type DOMString
The current object associated with the specified parameter or null if no object has been associated or if the parameter is not supported.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised when the parameter name is not recognized.
setParameter
Set the value of a parameter.
Parametersname of type DOMString
value of type DOMUserData
null if the user wishes to unset the parameter. While the type of the value parameter is defined as DOMUserData, the object type must match the type defined by the definition of the parameter. For example, if the parameter is "error-handler", the value must be of type DOMErrorHandler.
NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised when the parameter name is not recognized.
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised when the parameter name is recognized but the requested value cannot be set.
TYPE_MISMATCH_ERR: Raised if the value type for this parameter name is incompatible with the expected value type.
No Return Value
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 DOMImplementation.hasFeature(feature, version) method 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: Core Module and the feature "XMLVersion" with version "1.0" defined in Document.xmlVersion. 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.
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 CharacterData.data attribute 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.
No lexical check is done on the content of a CDATA section and it is therefore possible to have the character sequence "]]>" in the content, which is illegal in a CDATA section per section 2.7 of [XML 1.0]. The presence of this character sequence must generate a fatal error during serialization or the cdata section must be splitted before the serialization (see also the parameter "split-cdata-sections" in the DOMConfiguration 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.
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.
DOM Level 3 doesn't support editing DocumentType nodes. DocumentType nodes are read-only.
entities of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
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.
entities cannot be altered in any way.
internalSubset of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
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
DOCTYPE keyword.
notations of type NamedNodeMap, readonly
NamedNodeMap containing the notations declared in the DTD. Duplicates are discarded. Every node in this map also implements the Notation interface.
notations cannot be altered in any way.
publicId of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
systemId of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2
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 Core does not support editing Notation nodes; they are therefore readonly.
A Notation node does not have any parent.
publicId of type DOMString, readonly
null.
systemId of type DOMString, readonly
null. This may be an absolute URI or not.
This interface represents a known entity, either parsed or unparsed, in an XML document. Note that this models the entity itself not the entity declaration.
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 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.
DOM Level 3 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.
inputEncoding of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
null if it an entity from the internal subset or if it is not known.
notationName of type DOMString, readonly
null.
publicId of type DOMString, readonly
null otherwise.
systemId of type DOMString, readonly
null otherwise. This may be an absolute URI or not.
xmlEncoding of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
null otherwise.
xmlVersion of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 3
null otherwise.
EntityReference nodes may be used to represent an entity reference in the tree. 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 Document, instead of providing EntityReference nodes. If it does provide such nodes, then for an EntityReference node that represents a reference to a known entity an Entity exists, and the subtree of the EntityReference node is a copy of the Entity node subtree. However, the latter 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. When an EntityReference node represents a reference to an unknown entity, the node has no children and its replacement value, when used by Attr.value for example, is empty.
As for Entity nodes, EntityReference nodes and all their descendants are readonly.
Note: EntityReference nodes may cause element content and attribute value normalization problems when, such as in XML 1.0 and XML Schema, the normalization is performed after entity reference are expanded.
The ProcessingInstruction interface represents a "processing instruction", used in XML as a way to keep processor-specific information in the text of the document.
No lexical check is done on the content of a processing instruction and it is therefore possible to have the character sequence "?>" in the content, which is illegal a processing instruction per section 2.6 of [XML 1.0]. The presence of this character sequence must generate a fatal error during serialization.
data of type DOMString
?>.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.
target of type DOMString, readonly
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