org.w3c.dom
Interface Document

All Superinterfaces:

Node

public interface Document

extends Node

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

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

See also the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Specification and the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification.

Field Summary

Fields inherited from interface org.w3c.dom.Node

ATTRIBUTE_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE, ELEMENT_NODE, ENTITY_NODE, ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE, NOTATION_NODE, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE, TEXT_NODE

Method Summary

Node	adoptNode(Node source) Attempts to adopt a node from another document to this document.
Attr	createAttribute(String name) Creates an Attr of the given name.
Attr	createAttributeNS(String namespaceURI, String qualifiedName) Creates an attribute of the given qualified name and namespace URI.
CDATASection	createCDATASection(String data) Creates a CDATASection node whose value is the specified string.
Comment	createComment(String data) Creates a Comment node given the specified string.
DocumentFragment	createDocumentFragment() Creates an empty DocumentFragment object.
Element	createElement(String tagName) Creates an element of the type specified.
Element	createElementNS(String namespaceURI, String qualifiedName) Creates an element of the given qualified name and namespace URI.
EntityReference	createEntityReference(String name) Creates an EntityReference object.
ProcessingInstruction	createProcessingInstruction(String target, String data) Creates a ProcessingInstruction node given the specified name and data strings.
Text	createTextNode(String data) Creates a Text node given the specified string.
DocumentType	getDoctype() The Document Type Declaration (see DocumentType) associated with this document.
Element	getDocumentElement() This is a convenience attribute that allows direct access to the child node that is the root element of the document.
Element	getElementById(String elementId) Returns the Elementthat has an ID attribute with the given value.
NodeList	getElementsByTagName(String tagname) 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.
NodeList	getElementsByTagNameNS(String namespaceURI, String localName) Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given local name and namespace URI in document order.
DOMImplementation	getImplementation() The DOMImplementation object that handles this document.
Node	importNode(Node importedNode, boolean deep) 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.

Methods inherited from interface org.w3c.dom.Node

appendChild, cloneNode, getAttributes, getChildNodes, getFeature, getFirstChild, getLastChild, getLocalName, getNamespaceURI, getNextSibling, getNodeName, getNodeType, getNodeValue, getOwnerDocument, getParentNode, getPrefix, getPreviousSibling, getTextContent, getUserData, hasAttributes, hasChildNodes, insertBefore, isSupported, normalize, removeChild, replaceChild, setNodeValue, setPrefix, setTextContent, setUserData

Method Detail

getDoctype

public DocumentType getDoctype()

The Document Type Declaration (see 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.
This provides direct access to the 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.

Returns:

the Document Type Declaration associated with this document, or null

Since:

DOM Level 3

getImplementation

public DOMImplementation getImplementation()

The DOMImplementation object that handles this document. A DOM application may use objects from multiple implementations.

Returns:

the DOMImplementation object that handles this document

getDocumentElement

public Element getDocumentElement()

This is a convenience attribute that allows direct access to the child node that is the root element of the document.

Returns:

the child node that is the root element of the document

createElement

public Element createElement(String tagName)
                      throws DOMException

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 - The name of the element type to instantiate. For XML, this is case-sensitive. otherwise it depends on the case-sensitivity of the markup language in use. In that case, the name is mapped to the canonical form of that markup by the DOM implementation.

Returns:

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

Throws:

DOMException - INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use (1.0 for JSR 280).

createDocumentFragment

public DocumentFragment createDocumentFragment()

Creates an empty DocumentFragment object.

Returns:

A new DocumentFragment.

createTextNode

public Text createTextNode(String data)

Creates a Text node given the specified string.

Parameters:

data - The data for the node.

Returns:

The new Text object.

createComment

public Comment createComment(String data)

Creates a Comment node given the specified string.

Parameters:

data - The data for the node.

Returns:

The new Comment object.

createCDATASection

public CDATASection createCDATASection(String data)
                                throws DOMException

Creates a CDATASection node whose value is the specified string.

Parameters:

data - The data for the CDATASection contents.

Returns:

The new CDATASection object.

Throws:

DOMException - NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document.

createProcessingInstruction

public ProcessingInstruction createProcessingInstruction(String target,
                                                         String data)
                                                  throws DOMException

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

Parameters:

target - The target part of the processing instruction. Unlike Document.createElementNS or Document.createAttributeNS, no namespace well-formed checking is done on the target name.

data - The data for the node.

Returns:

The new ProcessingInstruction object.

Throws:

DOMException - INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified target is not an XML name according to the XML version in use (1.0 for JSR 280).
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document.

createAttribute

public Attr createAttribute(String name)
                     throws DOMException

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 - The name of the attribute.

Returns:

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.

Throws:

DOMException - INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use (1.0 for JSR 280).

createEntityReference

public EntityReference createEntityReference(String name)
                                      throws DOMException

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.

Parameters:

name - The name of the entity to reference. Unlike Document.createElementNS or Document.createAttributeNS, no namespace well-formed checking is done on the entity name.

Returns:

The new EntityReference object.

Throws:

DOMException - INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name is not an XML name according to the XML version in use (1.0 for JSR 280).
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if this document is an HTML document.

getElementsByTagName

public NodeList getElementsByTagName(String tagname)

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 - The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags. For XML, the tagname parameter is case-sensitive, otherwise it depends on the case-sensitivity of the markup language in use.

Returns:

A new NodeList object containing all the matched Elements.

importNode

public Node importNode(Node importedNode,
                       boolean deep)
                throws DOMException

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.
Additional information is copied as appropriate to the nodeType, attempting to mirror the behavior expected if a fragment of XML or HTML source was copied from one document to another, recognizing that the two documents may have different DTDs in the XML case. The following list describes the specifics for each type of node.

ATTRIBUTE_NODE

The ownerElement attribute is set to null and the specified flag is set to true on the generated Attr. The descendants of the source Attr are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree. Note that the deep parameter has no effect on Attr nodes; they always carry their children with them when imported.

DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE

If the deep option was set to true, the descendants of the source DocumentFragment are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled under the imported DocumentFragment to form the corresponding subtree. Otherwise, this simply generates an empty DocumentFragment.

DOCUMENT_NODE

Document nodes cannot be imported.

DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE

DocumentType nodes cannot be imported.

ELEMENT_NODE

Specified attribute nodes of the source element are imported, and the generated Attr nodes are attached to the generated Element. Default attributes are not copied, though if the document being imported into defines default attributes for this element name, those are assigned. If the importNode deep parameter was set to true, the descendants of the source element are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree.

ENTITY_NODE

Entity nodes can be imported, however in the current release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be considered for addition to a future release of the DOM.On import, the publicId, systemId, and notationName attributes are copied. If a deep import is requested, the descendants of the the source Entity are recursively imported and the resulting nodes reassembled to form the corresponding subtree.

ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE

Only the EntityReference itself is copied, even if a deep import is requested, since the source and destination documents might have defined the entity differently. If the document being imported into provides a definition for this entity name, its value is assigned.

NOTATION_NODE

Notation nodes can be imported, however in the current release of the DOM the DocumentType is readonly. Ability to add these imported nodes to a DocumentType will be considered for addition to a future release of the DOM.On import, the publicId and systemId attributes are copied. Note that the deep parameter has no effect on this type of nodes since they cannot have any children.

PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE

The imported node copies its target and data values from those of the source node. Note that the deep parameter has no effect on this type of nodes since they cannot have any children.

TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE

These three types of nodes inheriting from CharacterData copy their data and length attributes from those of the source node.Note that the deep parameter has no effect on this type of nodes since they cannot have any children.

Parameters:

importedNode - The node to import.

deep - If true, recursively import the subtree under the specified node; if false, import only the node itself, as explained above. This has no effect on nodes that cannot have any children, and on Attr, and EntityReference nodes.

Returns:

The imported node that belongs to this Document.

Throws:

DOMException - 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 (1.0 for JSR 280). This may happen when importing an XML 1.1 [XML 1.1] element into an XML 1.0 document, for instance.

Since:

DOM Level 2

createElementNS

public Element createElementNS(String namespaceURI,
                               String qualifiedName)
                        throws DOMException

Creates an element of the given qualified name and namespace URI.
Per [XML Namespaces] , applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

Parameters:

namespaceURI - The namespace URI of the element to create.

qualifiedName - The qualified name of the element type to instantiate.

Returns:

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

Throws:

DOMException - INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualifiedName is not an XML name according to the XML version in use (1.0 for JSR 280).
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.

Since:

DOM Level 2

createAttributeNS

public Attr createAttributeNS(String namespaceURI,
                              String qualifiedName)
                       throws DOMException

Creates an attribute of the given qualified name and namespace URI.
Per [XML Namespaces] , applications must use the value null as the namespaceURI parameter for methods if they wish to have no namespace.

Parameters:

namespaceURI - The namespace URI of the attribute to create.

qualifiedName - The qualified name of the attribute to instantiate.

Returns:

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

Throws:

DOMException - INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualifiedName is not an XML name according to the XML version in use (1.0 for JSR 280).
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.

Since:

DOM Level 2

getElementsByTagNameNS

public NodeList getElementsByTagNameNS(String namespaceURI,
                                       String localName)

Returns a NodeList of all the Elements with a given local name and namespace URI in document order.

Parameters:

namespaceURI - The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all namespaces.

localName - The local name of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all local names.

Returns:

A new NodeList object containing all the matched Elements.

Since:

DOM Level 2

getElementById

public Element getElementById(String elementId)

Returns the Elementthat 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. Implementations that do not know whether attributes are of type ID or not are expected to return null.

Parameters:

elementId - The unique id value for an element.

Returns:

The matching element or null if there is none.

Since:

DOM Level 2

adoptNode

public Node adoptNode(Node source)
               throws DOMException

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.

ATTRIBUTE_NODE

The ownerElement attribute is set to null> and the specified flag is set to true on the adopted Attr. The descendants of the source Attr are recursively adopted.

DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE

The descendants of the source node are recursively adopted.

DOCUMENT_NODE

Document nodes cannot be adopted.

DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE

DocumentType nodes cannot be adopted.

ELEMENT_NODE

Specified attribute nodes of the source element are adopted. Default attributes are discarded, though if the document being adopted into defines default attributes for this element name, those are assigned. The descendants of the source element are recursively adopted.

ENTITY_NODE

Entity nodes cannot be adopted.

ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE

Only the EntityReference node itself is adopted, the descendants are discarded, since the source and destination documents might have defined the entity differently. If the document being imported into provides a definition for this entity name, its value is assigned.

NOTATION_NODE

Notation nodes cannot be adopted.

PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE, TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE

These nodes can all be adopted. No specifics.

Note: Since it does not create new nodes unlike the Document.importNode() method, this method does not raise an INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception.

Parameters:

source - The node to move into this document.

Returns:

The adopted node, or null if this operation fails, such as when the source node comes from a different implementation.

Throws:

DOMException - NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: Raised if the source node is of type DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT_TYPE, ENTITY_NODE, NOTATION_NODE.
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised when the source node is readonly.

Since:

DOM Level 3