org.w3c.dom
Interface Entity

All Superinterfaces:

Node

public interface Entity

extends Node

This interface represents an entity, either parsed or unparsed, in an XML document. Note that this models the entity itself not the entity declaration.

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

An XML processor may choose to completely expand entities before the structure model is passed to the DOM; in this case there will be no EntityReference nodes in the document tree.
Note: If a parser expands entity references, the information contained in the corresponding Entity node becomes redundant. In the interest of footprint and performance, JSR 280 allows implementations to exclude Entity nodes corresponding to expanded entity references from the DOM tree if those references have been fully expanded by the parser.

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

The DOM Level 2 and DOM Level 3 do 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.

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

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

String	getNotationName() For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the entity.
String	getPublicId() The public identifier associated with the entity, if specified.
String	getSystemId() The system identifier associated with the entity, if specified.

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

getPublicId

public String getPublicId()

The public identifier associated with the entity, if specified. If the public identifier was not specified, this is null.

Returns:

The public identifier associated with the entity, or null

getSystemId

public String getSystemId()

The system identifier associated with the entity, if specified. If the system identifier was not specified, this is null.

Returns:

The system identifier associated with the entity or null

getNotationName

public String getNotationName()

For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the entity. For parsed entities, this is null.

Returns:

the name of the notation for the entity or null