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

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

WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if doctype has already been used with a different document or was created from a different implementation.

createDocumentType introduced in DOM Level 2

Creates an empty DocumentType node. Entity declarations and notations are not made available. Entity reference expansions and default attribute additions do not occur. It is expected that a future version of the DOM will provide a way for populating a DocumentType.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

qualifiedName of type DOMString: The qualified name of the document type to be created.
publicId of type DOMString: The external subset public identifier.
systemId of type DOMString: The external subset system identifier.

Return Value

DocumentType

A new DocumentType node with Node.ownerDocument set to null.

Exceptions

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

NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed.

hasFeature

Test if the DOM implementation implements a specific feature.

Parameters

feature of type DOMString: The name of the feature to test (case-insensitive). The values used by DOM features are defined throughout the DOM Level 2 specifications and listed in the Conformance section. The name must be an XML name. To avoid possible conflicts, as a convention, names referring to features defined outside the DOM specification should be made unique by reversing the name of the Internet domain name of the person (or the organization that the person belongs to) who defines the feature, component by component, and using this as a prefix. For instance, the W3C SVG Working Group defines the feature "org.w3c.dom.svg".
version of type DOMString: This is the version number of the feature to test. In Level 2, the string can be either "2.0" or "1.0". If the version is not specified, supporting any version of the feature causes the method to return true.

Return Value

boolean

true if the feature is implemented in the specified version, false otherwise.

No Exceptions

Interface DocumentFragment

DocumentFragment is a "lightweight" or "minimal" Document object. It is very common to want to be able to extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of a document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or rearranging a document by moving fragments around. It is desirable to have an object which can hold such fragments and it is quite natural to use a Node for this purpose. While it is true that a Document object could fulfill this role, a Document object can potentially be a heavyweight object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is really needed for this is a very lightweight object. DocumentFragment is such an object.

Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children of another Node -- may take DocumentFragment objects as arguments; this results in all the child nodes of the DocumentFragment being moved to the child list of this node.

The children of a DocumentFragment node are zero or more nodes representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of the document. DocumentFragment nodes do not need to be well-formed XML documents (although they do need to follow the rules imposed upon well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top nodes). For example, a DocumentFragment might have only one child and that child node could be a Text node. Such a structure model represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML document.

When a DocumentFragment is inserted into a Document (or indeed any other Node that may take children) the children of the DocumentFragment and not the DocumentFragment itself are inserted into the Node. This makes the DocumentFragment very useful when the user wishes to create nodes that are siblings; the DocumentFragment acts as the parent of these nodes so that the user can use the standard methods from the Node interface, such as insertBefore and appendChild.

IDL Definition

interface DocumentFragment : Node {
};

Interface Document

The Document interface represents the entire HTML or XML document. Conceptually, it is the root of the document tree, and provides the primary access to the document's data.

Since elements, text nodes, comments, processing instructions, etc. cannot exist outside the context of a Document, the Document interface also contains the factory methods needed to create these objects. The Node objects created have a ownerDocument attribute which associates them with the Document within whose context they were created.

IDL Definition

interface Document : Node {
  readonly attribute DocumentType     doctype;
  readonly attribute DOMImplementation  implementation;
  readonly attribute Element          documentElement;
  Element            createElement(in DOMString tagName)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  DocumentFragment   createDocumentFragment();
  Text               createTextNode(in DOMString data);
  Comment            createComment(in DOMString data);
  CDATASection       createCDATASection(in DOMString data)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  ProcessingInstruction createProcessingInstruction(in DOMString target,
                                                    in DOMString data)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  Attr               createAttribute(in DOMString name)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  EntityReference    createEntityReference(in DOMString name)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  NodeList           getElementsByTagName(in DOMString tagname);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  Node               importNode(in Node importedNode,
                                in boolean deep)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  Element            createElementNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
                                     in DOMString qualifiedName)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  Attr               createAttributeNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
                                       in DOMString qualifiedName)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  NodeList           getElementsByTagNameNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
                                            in DOMString localName);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  Element            getElementById(in DOMString elementId);
};

Attributes

doctype of type DocumentType, readonly: The Document Type Declaration (see DocumentType) associated with this document. For HTML documents as well as XML documents without a document type declaration this returns null. The DOM Level 2 does not support editing the Document Type Declaration. docType cannot be altered in any way, including through the use of methods inherited from the Node interface, such as insertNode or removeNode.
documentElement of type Element, readonly: This is a convenience attribute that allows direct access to the child node that is the root element of the document. For HTML documents, this is the element with the tagName "HTML".
implementation of type DOMImplementation, readonly: The DOMImplementation object that handles this document. A DOM application may use objects from multiple implementations.

Methods

createAttribute

Creates an Attr of the given name. Note that the Attr instance can then be set on an Element using the setAttributeNode method.
To create an attribute with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the createAttributeNS method.

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The name of the attribute.

Return Value

A new Attr object with the nodeName attribute set to name, and localName, prefix, and namespaceURI set to null. The value of the attribute is the empty string.

Exceptions

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

createAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2

Creates an attribute of the given qualified name and namespace URI. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

Return Value

A new Attr object with the following attributes:

Attribute	Value
`Node.nodeName`	qualifiedName
`Node.namespaceURI`	`namespaceURI`
`Node.prefix`	prefix, extracted from `qualifiedName`, or `null` if there is no prefix
`Node.localName`	local name, extracted from `qualifiedName`
`Attr.name`	`qualifiedName`
`Node.nodeValue`	the empty string

Exceptions

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

NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", or if the qualifiedName is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from "http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/".

createCDATASection

Creates a CDATASection node whose value is the specified string.

Parameters

Return Value

CDATASection

The new CDATASection object.

Exceptions

createDocumentFragment

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document.

createComment

Creates a Comment node given the specified string.

Parameters

data of type DOMString: The data for the node.

Return Value

Comment

The new Comment object.

No Exceptions

Creates an empty DocumentFragment object.

Return Value

DocumentFragment

A new DocumentFragment.

No Parameters

No Exceptions

createElement

Creates an element of the type specified. Note that the instance returned implements the Element interface, so attributes can be specified directly on the returned object.
In addition, if there are known attributes with default values, Attr nodes representing them are automatically created and attached to the element.
To create an element with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the createElementNS method.

Parameters

tagName of type DOMString: The name of the element type to instantiate. For XML, this is case-sensitive. For HTML, the tagName parameter may be provided in any case, but it must be mapped to the canonical uppercase form by the DOM implementation.

Return Value

Element

A new Element object with the nodeName attribute set to tagName, and localName, prefix, and namespaceURI set to null.

Exceptions

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

createElementNS introduced in DOM Level 2

Creates an element of the given qualified name and namespace URI. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

Return Value

Element

A new Element object with the following attributes:

Attribute	Value
`Node.nodeName`	`qualifiedName`
`Node.namespaceURI`	`namespaceURI`
`Node.prefix`	prefix, extracted from `qualifiedName`, or `null` if there is no prefix
`Node.localName`	local name, extracted from `qualifiedName`
`Element.tagName`	`qualifiedName`

Exceptions

createEntityReference

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

Creates an EntityReference object. In addition, if the referenced entity is known, the child list of the EntityReference node is made the same as that of the corresponding Entity node.

Note: If any descendant of the Entity node has an unbound namespace prefix, the corresponding descendant of the created EntityReference node is also unbound; (its namespaceURI is null). The DOM Level 2 does not support any mechanism to resolve namespace prefixes.

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The name of the entity to reference.

Return Value

EntityReference

The new EntityReference object.

Exceptions

createProcessingInstruction

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

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document.

Creates a ProcessingInstruction node given the specified name and data strings.

Parameters

target of type DOMString: The target part of the processing instruction.
data of type DOMString: The data for the node.

Return Value

ProcessingInstruction

The new ProcessingInstruction object.

Exceptions

getElementsByTagName

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

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document.

createTextNode

Creates a Text node given the specified string.

Parameters

data of type DOMString: The data for the node.

Return Value

Text

The new Text object.

No Exceptions

getElementById introduced in DOM Level 2

Returns the Element whose ID is given by elementId. If no such element exists, returns null. Behavior is not defined if more than one element has this ID.

Note: The DOM implementation must have information that says which attributes are of type ID. Attributes with the name "ID" are not of type ID unless so defined. Implementations that do not know whether attributes are of type ID or not are expected to return null.

Parameters

elementId of type DOMString: The unique id value for an element.

Return Value

Element

The matching element.

No Exceptions

Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given tag name in the order in which they are encountered in a preorder traversal of the Document tree.

Parameters

tagname of type DOMString: The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags.

Return Value

A new NodeList object containing all the matched Elements.

No Exceptions

getElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2

Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given local name and namespace URI in the order in which they are encountered in a preorder traversal of the Document tree.

Parameters

namespaceURI of type DOMString: The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all namespaces.
localName of type DOMString: The local name of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all local names.

Return Value

A new NodeList object containing all the matched Elements.

No Exceptions

importNode introduced in DOM Level 2

Imports a node from another document to this document. The returned node has no parent; (parentNode is null). The source node is not altered or removed from the original document; this method creates a new copy of the source node.
For all nodes, importing a node creates a node object owned by the importing document, with attribute values identical to the source node's nodeName and nodeType, plus the attributes related to namespaces (prefix, localName, and namespaceURI). As in the cloneNode operation on a Node, the source node is not altered.
Additional information is copied as appropriate to the nodeType, attempting to mirror the behavior expected if a fragment of XML or HTML source was copied from one document to another, recognizing that the two documents may have different DTDs in the XML case. The following list describes the specifics for each type of node.

ATTRIBUTE_NODE: The ownerElement attribute is set to null and the specified flag is set to true on the generated Attr. The descendants of the source Attr are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree.
Note that the deep parameter has no effect on Attr nodes; they always carry their children with them when imported.
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE: If the deep option was set to true, the descendants of the source element are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree. Otherwise, this simply generates an empty DocumentFragment.
DOCUMENT_NODE: Document nodes cannot be imported.
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE: DocumentType nodes cannot be imported.
ELEMENT_NODE: Specified attribute nodes of the source element are imported, and the generated Attr nodes are attached to the generated Element. Default attributes are not copied, though if the document being imported into defines default attributes for this element name, those are assigned. If the importNode deep parameter was set to true, the descendants of the source element are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree.
ENTITY_NODE: Entity nodes can be imported, however in the current release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be considered for addition to a future release of the DOM.
On import, the publicId, systemId, and notationName attributes are copied. If a deep import is requested, the descendants of the the source Entity are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree.
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE: Only the EntityReference itself is copied, even if a deep import is requested, since the source and destination documents might have defined the entity differently. If the document being imported into provides a definition for this entity name, its value is assigned.
NOTATION_NODE: Notation nodes can be imported, however in the current release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be considered for addition to a future release of the DOM.
On import, the publicId and systemId attributes are copied.
Note that the deep parameter has no effect on Notation nodes since they never have any children.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE: The imported node copies its target and data values from those of the source node.
TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE: These three types of nodes inheriting from CharacterData copy their data and length attributes from those of the source node.

Parameters

importedNode of type Node: The node to import.
deep of type boolean: If true, recursively import the subtree under the specified node; if false, import only the node itself, as explained above. This has no effect on Attr, EntityReference, and Notation nodes.

Return Value

The imported node that belongs to this Document.

Exceptions

NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the type of node being imported is not supported.

Interface Node

The Node interface is the primary datatype for the entire Document Object Model. It represents a single node in the document tree. While all objects implementing the Node interface expose methods for dealing with children, not all objects implementing the Node interface may have children. For example, Text nodes may not have children, and adding children to such nodes results in a DOMException being raised.

The attributes nodeName, nodeValue and attributes are included as a mechanism to get at node information without casting down to the specific derived interface. In cases where there is no obvious mapping of these attributes for a specific nodeType (e.g., nodeValue for an Element or attributes for a Comment), this returns null. Note that the specialized interfaces may contain additional and more convenient mechanisms to get and set the relevant information.

IDL Definition

interface Node {
  // NodeType
  const unsigned short      ELEMENT_NODE                   = 1;
  const unsigned short      ATTRIBUTE_NODE                 = 2;
  const unsigned short      TEXT_NODE                      = 3;
  const unsigned short      CDATA_SECTION_NODE             = 4;
  const unsigned short      ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE          = 5;
  const unsigned short      ENTITY_NODE                    = 6;
  const unsigned short      PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE    = 7;
  const unsigned short      COMMENT_NODE                   = 8;
  const unsigned short      DOCUMENT_NODE                  = 9;
  const unsigned short      DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE             = 10;
  const unsigned short      DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE         = 11;
  const unsigned short      NOTATION_NODE                  = 12;
  readonly attribute DOMString        nodeName;
           attribute DOMString        nodeValue;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting
                                        // raises(DOMException) on retrieval
  readonly attribute unsigned short   nodeType;
  readonly attribute Node             parentNode;
  readonly attribute NodeList         childNodes;
  readonly attribute Node             firstChild;
  readonly attribute Node             lastChild;
  readonly attribute Node             previousSibling;
  readonly attribute Node             nextSibling;
  readonly attribute NamedNodeMap     attributes;
  // Modified in DOM Level 2:
  readonly attribute Document         ownerDocument;
  Node               insertBefore(in Node newChild,
                                  in Node refChild)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  Node               replaceChild(in Node newChild,
                                  in Node oldChild)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  Node               removeChild(in Node oldChild)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  Node               appendChild(in Node newChild)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  boolean            hasChildNodes();
  Node               cloneNode(in boolean deep);
  // Modified in DOM Level 2:
  void               normalize();
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  boolean            isSupported(in DOMString feature,
                                 in DOMString version);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  readonly attribute DOMString        namespaceURI;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
           attribute DOMString        prefix;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  readonly attribute DOMString        localName;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  boolean            hasAttributes();
};

Definition group NodeType

An integer indicating which type of node this is.

Note: Numeric codes up to 200 are reserved to W3C for possible future use.

Defined Constants

ATTRIBUTE_NODE: The node is an Attr.
CDATA_SECTION_NODE: The node is a CDATASection.
COMMENT_NODE: The node is a Comment.
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE: The node is a DocumentFragment.
DOCUMENT_NODE: The node is a Document.
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE: The node is a DocumentType.
ELEMENT_NODE: The node is an Element.
ENTITY_NODE: The node is an Entity.
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE: The node is an EntityReference.
NOTATION_NODE: The node is a Notation.
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE: The node is a ProcessingInstruction.
TEXT_NODE: The node is a Text node.

The values of nodeName, nodeValue, and attributes vary according to the node type as follows:

Interface	nodeName	nodeValue	attributes
Attr	name of attribute	value of attribute	null
CDATASection	#cdata-section	content of the CDATA Section	null
Comment	#comment	content of the comment	null
Document	#document	null	null
DocumentFragment	#document-fragment	null	null
DocumentType	document type name	null	null
Element	tag name	null	NamedNodeMap
Entity	entity name	null	null
EntityReference	name of entity referenced	null	null
Notation	notation name	null	null
ProcessingInstruction	target	entire content excluding the target	null
Text	#text	content of the text node	null

Attributes

attributes of type NamedNodeMap, readonly

A NamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it is an Element) or null otherwise.

childNodes of type NodeList, readonly

A NodeList that contains all children of this node. If there are no children, this is a NodeList containing no nodes.

firstChild of type Node, readonly

The first child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.

lastChild of type Node, readonly

The last child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.

localName of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2

Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node.
For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as createElement from the Document interface, this is always null.

namespaceURI of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2

The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified.
This is not a computed value that is the result of a namespace lookup based on an examination of the namespace declarations in scope. It is merely the namespace URI given at creation time.
For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as createElement from the Document interface, this is always null.

Note: Per the Namespaces in XML Specification [Namespaces] an attribute does not inherit its namespace from the element it is attached to. If an attribute is not explicitly given a namespace, it simply has no namespace.

nextSibling of type Node, readonly

The node immediately following this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.

nodeName of type DOMString, readonly

The name of this node, depending on its type; see the table above.

nodeType of type unsigned short, readonly

A code representing the type of the underlying object, as defined above.

nodeValue of type DOMString

The value of this node, depending on its type; see the table above. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect.

Exceptions on setting

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.

Exceptions on retrieval

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

ownerDocument of type Document, readonly, modified in DOM Level 2

The Document object associated with this node. This is also the Document object used to create new nodes. When this node is a Document or a DocumentType which is not used with any Document yet, this is null.

parentNode of type Node, readonly

The parent of this node. All nodes, except Attr, Document, DocumentFragment, Entity, and Notation may have a parent. However, if a node has just been created and not yet added to the tree, or if it has been removed from the tree, this is null.

prefix of type DOMString, introduced in DOM Level 2

The namespace prefix of this node, or null if it is unspecified.
Note that setting this attribute, when permitted, changes the nodeName attribute, which holds the qualified name, as well as the tagName and name attributes of the Element and Attr interfaces, when applicable.
Note also that changing the prefix of an attribute that is known to have a default value, does not make a new attribute with the default value and the original prefix appear, since the namespaceURI and localName do not change.
For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as createElement from the Document interface, this is always null.

Exceptions on setting

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

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the specified prefix is malformed, 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" [Namespaces].

previousSibling of type Node, readonly

The node immediately preceding this node. If there is no such node, this returns null.

Methods

appendChild

Adds the node newChild to the end of the list of children of this node. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed.

Parameters

newChild of type Node: The node to add.
If it is a DocumentFragment object, the entire contents of the document fragment are moved into the child list of this node

Return Value

The node added.

Exceptions

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.

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.

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.).
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 text it contains unless it is a deep clone, since the text is contained in a child Text node. Cloning an Attribute directly, as opposed to be cloned as part of an Element cloning operation, returns a specified attribute (specified is true). Cloning any other type of node simply returns a copy of this node.
Note that cloning an immutable subtree results in a mutable copy, but the children of an EntityReference clone are readonly. In addition, clones of unspecified Attr nodes are specified. And, cloning Document, DocumentType, Entity, and Notation nodes is implementation dependent.

Parameters

deep of type boolean: If true, recursively clone the subtree under the specified node; if false, clone only the node itself (and its attributes, if it is an Element).

Return Value

The duplicate node.

No Exceptions

hasAttributes introduced in DOM Level 2

Returns whether this node (if it is an element) has any attributes.

Return Value

boolean

true if this node has any attributes, false otherwise.

No Parameters

No Exceptions

hasChildNodes

Returns whether this node has any children.

Return Value

boolean

true if this node has any children, false otherwise.

No Parameters

No Exceptions

insertBefore

Inserts the node newChild before the existing child node refChild. If refChild is null, insert newChild at the end of the list of children.
If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, all of its children are inserted, in the same order, before refChild. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed.

Parameters

newChild of type Node: The node to insert.
refChild of type Node: The reference node, i.e., the node before which the new node must be inserted.

Return Value

The node being inserted.

Exceptions

HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if this node is of a type that does not allow children of the type of the newChild node, or if the node to insert is one of this node's ancestors.

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.

isSupported introduced in DOM Level 2

Tests whether the DOM implementation implements a specific feature and that feature is supported by this node.

Parameters

feature of type DOMString: The name of the feature to test. This is the same name which can be passed to the method hasFeature on DOMImplementation.
version of type DOMString: This is the version number of the feature to test. In Level 2, version 1, this is the string "2.0". If the version is not specified, supporting any version of the feature will cause the method to return true.

Return Value

boolean

Returns true if the specified feature is supported on this node, false otherwise.

No Exceptions

normalize modified in DOM Level 2

Puts all Text nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree underneath this Node, including attribute nodes, into a "normal" form where only structure (e.g., elements, comments, processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity references) separates Text nodes, i.e., there are neither adjacent Text nodes nor empty Text nodes. This can be used to ensure that the DOM view of a document is the same as if it were saved and re-loaded, and is useful when operations (such as XPointer [XPointer] lookups) that depend on a particular document tree structure are to be used.

Note: In cases where the document contains CDATASections, the normalize operation alone may not be sufficient, since XPointers do not differentiate between Text nodes and CDATASection nodes.

No Parameters

No Return Value

No Exceptions

removeChild

Removes the child node indicated by oldChild from the list of children, and returns it.

Parameters

oldChild of type Node: The node being removed.

Return Value

The node removed.

Exceptions

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldChild is not a child of this node.

replaceChild

Replaces the child node oldChild with newChild in the list of children, and returns the oldChild node.
If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, oldChild is replaced by all of the DocumentFragment children, which are inserted in the same order. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed.

Parameters

newChild of type Node: The new node to put in the child list.
oldChild of type Node: The node being replaced in the list.

Return Value

The node replaced.

Exceptions

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.

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.

Interface NodeList

The NodeList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of nodes, without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. NodeList objects in the DOM are live.

The items in the NodeList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.

IDL Definition

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

Attributes

length of type unsigned long, readonly: The number of nodes in the list. The range of valid child node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

Methods

item

Returns the indexth item in the collection. If index is greater than or equal to the number of nodes in the list, this returns null.

Parameters

index of type unsigned long: Index into the collection.

Return Value

The node at the indexth position in the NodeList, or null if that is not a valid index.

No Exceptions

Interface NamedNodeMap

Objects implementing the NamedNodeMap interface are used to represent collections of nodes that can be accessed by name. Note that NamedNodeMap does not inherit from NodeList; NamedNodeMaps are not maintained in any particular order. Objects contained in an object implementing NamedNodeMap may also be accessed by an ordinal index, but this is simply to allow convenient enumeration of the contents of a NamedNodeMap, and does not imply that the DOM specifies an order to these Nodes.

NamedNodeMap objects in the DOM are live.

IDL Definition

interface NamedNodeMap {
  Node               getNamedItem(in DOMString name);
  Node               setNamedItem(in Node arg)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  Node               removeNamedItem(in DOMString name)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  Node               item(in unsigned long index);
  readonly attribute unsigned long    length;
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  Node               getNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
                                    in DOMString localName);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  Node               setNamedItemNS(in Node arg)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  Node               removeNamedItemNS(in DOMString namespaceURI,
                                       in DOMString localName)
                                        raises(DOMException);
};

Attributes

length of type unsigned long, readonly: The number of nodes in this map. The range of valid child node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

Methods

getNamedItem

Retrieves a node specified by name.

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The nodeName of a node to retrieve.

Return Value

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. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

Return Value

A Node (of any type) with the specified local name and namespace URI, or null if they do not identify any node in this map.

No Exceptions

item

Returns the indexth item in the map. If index is greater than or equal to the number of nodes in this map, this returns null.

Parameters

index of type unsigned long: Index into this map.

Return Value

The node at the indexth position in the map, or null if that is not a valid index.

No Exceptions

removeNamedItem

Removes a node specified by name. When this map contains the attributes attached to an element, if the removed attribute is known to have a default value, an attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable.

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The nodeName of the node to remove.

Return Value

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

Exceptions

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

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly.

removeNamedItemNS introduced in DOM Level 2

Removes a node specified by local name and namespace URI. A removed attribute may be known to have a default value when this map contains the attributes attached to an element, as returned by the attributes attribute of the Node interface. If so, an attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

Return Value

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

Exceptions

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

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this map is readonly.

setNamedItem

Adds a node using its nodeName attribute. If a node with that name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new one.
As the nodeName attribute is used to derive the name which the node must be stored under, multiple nodes of certain types (those that have a "special" string value) cannot be stored as the names would clash. This is seen as preferable to allowing nodes to be aliased.

Parameters

arg of type Node: A node to store in this map. The node will later be accessible using the value of its nodeName attribute.

Return Value

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

Exceptions

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.

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.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

arg of type Node: A node to store in this map. The node will later be accessible using the value of its namespaceURI and localName attributes.

Return Value

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

Exceptions

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.

Interface CharacterData

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

As explained in the DOMString interface, text strings in the DOM are represented in UTF-16, i.e. as a sequence of 16-bit units. In the following, the term 16-bit units is used whenever necessary to indicate that indexing on CharacterData is done in 16-bit units.

IDL Definition

interface CharacterData : Node {
           attribute DOMString        data;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting
                                        // raises(DOMException) on retrieval
  readonly attribute unsigned long    length;
  DOMString          substringData(in unsigned long offset,
                                   in unsigned long count)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  void               appendData(in DOMString arg)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  void               insertData(in unsigned long offset,
                                in DOMString arg)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  void               deleteData(in unsigned long offset,
                                in unsigned long count)
                                        raises(DOMException);
  void               replaceData(in unsigned long offset,
                                 in unsigned long count,
                                 in DOMString arg)
                                        raises(DOMException);
};

Attributes

data of type DOMString

The character data of the node that implements this interface. The DOM implementation may not put arbitrary limits on the amount of data that may be stored in a CharacterData node. However, implementation limits may mean that the entirety of a node's data may not fit into a single DOMString. In such cases, the user may call substringData to retrieve the data in appropriately sized pieces.

Exceptions on setting

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.

Exceptions on retrieval

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

length of type unsigned long, readonly

The number of 16-bit units that are available through data and the substringData method below. This may have the value zero, i.e., CharacterData nodes may be empty.

Methods

appendData

Append the string to the end of the character data of the node. Upon success, data provides access to the concatenation of data and the DOMString specified.

Parameters

Exceptions

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value

deleteData

Remove a range of 16-bit units from the node. Upon success, data and length reflect the change.

Parameters

offset of type unsigned long: The offset from which to start removing.
count of type unsigned long: The number of 16-bit units to delete. If the sum of offset and count exceeds length then all 16-bit units from offset to the end of the data are deleted.

Exceptions

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

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value

insertData

Insert a string at the specified 16-bit unit offset.

Parameters

offset of type unsigned long: The character offset at which to insert.
arg of type DOMString: The DOMString to insert.

Exceptions

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

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value

replaceData

Replace the characters starting at the specified 16-bit unit offset with the specified string.

Parameters

offset of type unsigned long: The offset from which to start replacing.
count of type unsigned long: The number of 16-bit units to replace. If the sum of offset and count exceeds length, then all 16-bit units to the end of the data are replaced; (i.e., the effect is the same as a remove method call with the same range, followed by an append method invocation).
arg of type DOMString: The DOMString with which the range must be replaced.

Exceptions

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

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value

substringData

Extracts a range of data from the node.

Parameters

offset of type unsigned long: Start offset of substring to extract.
count of type unsigned long: The number of 16-bit units to extract.

Return Value

DOMString

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

Exceptions

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

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

Interface Attr

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

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

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

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

IDL Definition

interface Attr : Node {
  readonly attribute DOMString        name;
  readonly attribute boolean          specified;
           attribute DOMString        value;
                                        // raises(DOMException) on setting
  // Introduced in DOM Level 2:
  readonly attribute Element          ownerElement;
};

Attributes

name of type DOMString, readonly

Returns the name of this attribute.

ownerElement of type Element, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2

The Element node this attribute is attached to or null if this attribute is not in use.

specified of type boolean, readonly

If this attribute was explicitly given a value in the original document, this is true; otherwise, it is false. Note that the implementation is in charge of this attribute, not the user. If the user changes the value of the attribute (even if it ends up having the same value as the default value) then the specified flag is automatically flipped to true. To re-specify the attribute as the default value from the DTD, the user must delete the attribute. The implementation will then make a new attribute available with specified set to false and the default value (if one exists).
In summary:

If the attribute has an assigned value in the document then specified is true, and the value is the assigned value.
If the attribute has no assigned value in the document and has a default value in the DTD, then specified is false, and the value is the default value in the DTD.
If the attribute has no assigned value in the document and has a value of #IMPLIED in the DTD, then the attribute does not appear in the structure model of the document.
If the ownerElement attribute is null (i.e. because it was just created or was set to null by the various removal and cloning operations) specified is true.

value of type DOMString

On retrieval, the value of the attribute is returned as a string. Character and general entity references are replaced with their values. See also the method getAttribute on the Element interface.
On setting, this creates a Text node with the unparsed contents of the string. I.e. any characters that an XML processor would recognize as markup are instead treated as literal text. See also the method setAttribute on the Element interface.

Exceptions on setting

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the node is readonly.

Interface Element

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

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

IDL Definition

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

Attributes

tagName of type DOMString, readonly

The name of the element. For example, in:

<elementExample id="demo">
        ...
</elementExample> ,

tagName has the value "elementExample". Note that this is case-preserving in XML, as are all of the operations of the DOM. The HTML DOM returns the tagName of an HTML element in the canonical uppercase form, regardless of the case in the source HTML document.

Methods

getAttribute

Retrieves an attribute value by name.

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The name of the attribute to retrieve.

Return Value

DOMString

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

No Exceptions

getAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2

Retrieves an attribute value by local name and namespace URI. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

Return Value

DOMString

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

No Exceptions

getAttributeNode

Retrieves an attribute node by name.
To retrieve an attribute node by qualified name and namespace URI, use the getAttributeNodeNS method.

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The name (nodeName) of the attribute to retrieve.

Return Value

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. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

Return Value

getElementsByTagName

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

No Exceptions

Returns a NodeList of all descendant Elements with a given tag name, in the order in which they are encountered in a preorder traversal of this Element tree.

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags.

Return Value

A list of matching Element nodes.

No Exceptions

getElementsByTagNameNS introduced in DOM Level 2

Returns a NodeList of all the descendant Elements with a given local name and namespace URI in the order in which they are encountered in a preorder traversal of this Element tree.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

namespaceURI of type DOMString: The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all namespaces.
localName of type DOMString: The local name of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all local names.

Return Value

A new NodeList object containing all the matched Elements.

No Exceptions

hasAttribute introduced in DOM Level 2

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

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The name of the attribute to look for.

Return Value

boolean

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

No Exceptions

hasAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2

Returns true when an attribute with a given local name and namespace URI is specified on this element or has a default value, false otherwise. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

Return Value

boolean

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

No Exceptions

removeAttribute

Removes an attribute by name. If the removed attribute is known to have a default value, an attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable.
To remove an attribute by local name and namespace URI, use the removeAttributeNS method.

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The name of the attribute to remove.

Exceptions

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value

removeAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2

Removes an attribute by local name and namespace URI. If the removed attribute has a default value it is immediately replaced. The replacing attribute has the same namespace URI and local name, as well as the original prefix.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

Exceptions

removeAttributeNode

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value

Removes the specified attribute node. If the removed Attr has a default value it is immediately replaced. The replacing attribute has the same namespace URI and local name, as well as the original prefix, when applicable.

Parameters

oldAttr of type Attr: The Attr node to remove from the attribute list.

Return Value

The Attr node that was removed.

Exceptions

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

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

setAttribute

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

Parameters

name of type DOMString: The name of the attribute to create or alter.
value of type DOMString: Value to set in string form.

Exceptions

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

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value

setAttributeNS introduced in DOM Level 2

Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with the same local name and namespace URI is already present on the element, its prefix is changed to be the prefix part of the qualifiedName, and its value is changed to be the value parameter. This value is a simple string; it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as syntax to be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is written out. In order to assign an attribute value that contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNodeNS or setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

Exceptions

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

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

No Return Value

setAttributeNode

Adds a new attribute node. If an attribute with that name (nodeName) is already present in the element, it is replaced by the new one.
To add a new attribute node with a qualified name and namespace URI, use the setAttributeNodeNS method.

Parameters

newAttr of type Attr: The Attr node to add to the attribute list.

Return Value

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

Exceptions

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.
HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

Parameters

newAttr of type Attr: The Attr node to add to the attribute list.

Return Value

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

Exceptions

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.

Interface Text

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

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

IDL Definition

interface Text : CharacterData {
  Text               splitText(in unsigned long offset)
                                        raises(DOMException);
};

Methods

splitText

Breaks this node into two nodes at the specified offset, keeping both in the tree as siblings. After being split, this node will contain all the content up to the offset point. A new node of the same type, which contains all the content at and after the offset point, is returned. If the original node had a parent node, the new node is inserted as the next sibling of the original node. When the offset is equal to the length of this node, the new node has no data.

Parameters

offset of type unsigned long: The 16-bit unit offset at which to split, starting from 0.

Return Value

Text

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

Exceptions

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

NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

Interface Comment

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

IDL Definition

interface Comment : CharacterData {
};

1.3. Extended Interfaces

The interfaces defined here form part of the DOM Core specification, but objects that expose these interfaces will never be encountered in a DOM implementation that deals only with HTML. As such, HTML-only DOM implementations [DOM Level 2 HTML] do not need to have objects that implement these interfaces.

The interfaces found within this section are not mandatory. A DOM application may use the hasFeature(feature, version) method of the DOMImplementation interface with parameter values "XML" and "2.0" (respectively) to determine whether or not this module is supported by the implementation. In order to fully support this module, an implementation must also support the "Core" feature defined in Fundamental Interfaces. Please refer to additional information about Conformance in this specification.

Interface CDATASection

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

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

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

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

IDL Definition

interface CDATASection : Text {
};

Interface DocumentType

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

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

IDL Definition

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

Attributes

entities of type NamedNodeMap, readonly

A NamedNodeMap containing the general entities, both external and internal, declared in the DTD. Parameter entities are not contained. Duplicates are discarded. For example in:

<!DOCTYPE ex SYSTEM "ex.dtd" [
  <!ENTITY foo "foo">
  <!ENTITY bar "bar">
  <!ENTITY bar "bar2">
  <!ENTITY % baz "baz">
]>
<ex/>

the interface provides access to foo and the first declaration of bar but not the second declaration of bar or baz. Every node in this map also implements the Entity interface.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing entities, therefore entities cannot be altered in any way.

internalSubset of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2

The internal subset as a string.

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

name of type DOMString, readonly

The name of DTD; i.e., the name immediately following the DOCTYPE keyword.

notations of type NamedNodeMap, readonly

A NamedNodeMap containing the notations declared in the DTD. Duplicates are discarded. Every node in this map also implements the Notation interface.
The DOM Level 2 does not support editing notations, therefore notations cannot be altered in any way.

publicId of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2

The public identifier of the external subset.

systemId of type DOMString, readonly, introduced in DOM Level 2

The system identifier of the external subset.

Interface Notation

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

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

A Notation node does not have any parent.

IDL Definition

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

Attributes

publicId of type DOMString, readonly: The public identifier of this notation. If the public identifier was not specified, this is null.
systemId of type DOMString, readonly: The system identifier of this notation. If the system identifier was not specified, this is null.

Interface Entity

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

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

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

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

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

An Entity node does not have any parent.

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

IDL Definition

interface Entity : Node {
  readonly attribute DOMString        publicId;
  readonly attribute DOMString        systemId;
  readonly attribute DOMString        notationName;
};

Attributes

notationName of type DOMString, readonly: For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the entity. For parsed entities, this is null.
publicId of type DOMString, readonly: The public identifier associated with the entity, if specified. If the public identifier was not specified, this is null.
systemId of type DOMString, readonly: The system identifier associated with the entity, if specified. If the system identifier was not specified, this is null.

Interface EntityReference

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

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

IDL Definition

interface EntityReference : Node {
};

Interface ProcessingInstruction

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

IDL Definition

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

Attributes

data of type DOMString

The content of this processing instruction. This is from the first non white space character after the target to the character immediately preceding the ?>.

Exceptions on setting