Dom PDF
Dom PDF
Dom PDF
Editors:
Lauren Wood, SoftQuad, Inc., chair
Arnaud Le Hors, W3C, staff contact
Vidur Apparao, Netscape
Steve Byrne, Sun
Mike Champion, ArborText
Scott Isaacs, Microsoft
Ian Jacobs, W3C
Gavin Nicol, Inso EPS
Jonathan Robie, Texcel Research
Robert Sutor, IBM
Chris Wilson, Microsoft
Copyright © 2000 W3C ® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document
use and software licensing rules apply.
Abstract
This specification defines the Document Object Model Level 1, a platform- and language-neutral interface
that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of
documents. The Document Object Model provides a standard set of objects for representing HTML and
XML documents, a standard model of how these objects can be combined, and a standard interface for
accessing and manipulating them. Vendors can support the DOM as an interface to their proprietary data
structures and APIs, and content authors can write to the standard DOM interfaces rather than
1
Status of this document
The goal of the DOM specification is to define a programmatic interface for XML and HTML. The DOM
Level 1 specification is separated into two parts: Core and HTML. The Core DOM Level 1 section
provides a low-level set of fundamental interfaces that can represent any structured document, as well as
defining extended interfaces for representing an XML document. These extended XML interfaces need
not be implemented by a DOM implementation that only provides access to HTML documents; all of the
fundamental interfaces in the Core section must be implemented. A compliant DOM implementation that
implements the extended XML interfaces is required to also implement the fundamental Core interfaces,
but not the HTML interfaces. The HTML Level 1 section provides additional, higher-level interfaces that
are used with the fundamental interfaces defined in the Core Level 1 section to provide a more convenient
view of an HTML document. A compliant implementation of the HTML DOM implements all of the
fundamental Core interfaces as well as the HTML interfaces.
This second edition is not a new version of the DOM Level 1; it merely incorporates the changes dictated
by the first-edition errata list. This document should not be used as reference material or cited as a
normative reference from another document.
This document has been produced as part of the W3C DOM Activity. The authors of this document are
the DOM WG members. Different modules of the Document Object Model have different editors.
Please report errors in this document to the public mailing list [email protected]. An archive is available
at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-dom/.
A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at
http://www.w3.org/TR.
Table of contents
Expanded Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Copyright Notice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
What is the Document Object Model? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
.
2
Table of contents
3
Table of contents
4
Expanded Table of Contents
5
Expanded Table of Contents
6
Copyright Notice
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2000 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institut
National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.
This document is published under the W3C Document Copyright Notice and License [p.7] . The bindings
within this document are published under the W3C Software Copyright Notice and License [p.8] . The
software license requires "Notice of any changes or modifications to the W3C files, including the date
changes were made." Consequently, modified versions of the DOM bindings must document that they do
not conform to the W3C standard; in the case of the IDL Definitions, the pragma prefix can no longer be
’w3c.org’; in the case of the Java Language binding, the package names can no longer be in the ’org.w3c’
package.
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/
Public documents on the W3C site are provided by the copyright holders under the following license. The
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Permission to use, copy, and distribute the contents of this document, or the W3C document from which
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When space permits, inclusion of the full text of this NOTICE should be provided. We request that
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pursuant to the implementation of the contents of this document, or any portion thereof.
7
W3C Software Copyright Notice and License
No right to create modifications or derivatives of W3C documents is granted pursuant to this license.
However, if additional requirements (documented in the Copyright FAQ) are satisfied, the right to create
modifications or derivatives is sometimes granted by the W3C to individuals complying with those
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"Copyright © [$date-of-software] World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of
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All Rights Reserved. http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/."
3. Notice of any changes or modifications to the W3C files, including the date changes were made. (We
8
W3C Software Copyright Notice and License
recommend you provide URIs to the location from which the code is derived.)
COPYRIGHT HOLDERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY USE OF THE SOFTWARE OR
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The name and trademarks of copyright holders may NOT be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to
the software without specific, written prior permission. Title to copyright in this software and any
associated documentation will at all times remain with copyright holders.
9
W3C Software Copyright Notice and License
10
What is the Document Object Model?
Introduction
The Document Object Model (DOM) is an application programming interface (API) for valid HTML and
well-formed XML documents. It defines the logical structure of documents and the way a document is
accessed and manipulated. In the DOM specification, the term "document" is used in the broad sense -
increasingly, XML is being used as a way of representing many different kinds of information that may be
stored in diverse systems, and much of this would traditionally be seen as data rather than as documents.
Nevertheless, XML presents this data as documents, and the DOM may be used to manage this data.
With the Document Object Model, programmers can build documents, navigate their structure, and add,
modify, or delete elements and content. Anything found in an HTML or XML document can be accessed,
changed, deleted, or added using the Document Object Model, with a few exceptions - in particular, the
DOM interfaces for the XML internal and external subsets have not yet been specified.
As a W3C specification, one important objective for the Document Object Model is to provide a standard
programming interface that can be used in a wide variety of environments and applications. The DOM is
designed to be used with any programming language. In order to provide a precise, language-independent
specification of the DOM interfaces, we have chosen to define the specifications in Object Management
Group (OMG) IDL [OMGIDL], as defined in the CORBA 2.2 specification [CORBA]. In addition to the
OMG IDL specification, we provide language bindings for Java [Java] and ECMAScript [ECMAScript]
(an industry-standard scripting language based on JavaScript and JScript).
Note: OMG IDL is used only as a language-independent and implementation-neutral way to specify
interfaces. Various other IDLs could have been used. In general, IDLs are designed for specific computing
environments. The Document Object Model can be implemented in any computing environment, and does
not require the object binding runtimes generally associated with such IDLs.
11
What the Document Object Model is
<TD>Dorian</TD>
</TR>
</TBODY>
</TABLE>
In the DOM, documents have a logical structure which is very much like a tree; to be more precise, which
is like a "forest" or "grove", which can contain more than one tree. Each document contains zero or one
doctype nodes, one root element node, and zero or more comments or processing instructions; the root
element serves as the root of the element tree for the document. However, the DOM does not specify that
documents must be implemented as a tree or a grove, nor does it specify how the relationships among
objects be implemented. The DOM is a logical model that may be implemented in any convenient manner.
In this specification, we use the term structure model to describe the tree-like representation of a
document. We also use the term "tree" when referring to the arrangement of those information items
which can be reached by using "tree-walking" methods; (this does not include attributes). One important
property of DOM structure models is structural isomorphism: if any two Document Object Model
implementations are used to create a representation of the same document, they will create the same
structure model, in accordance with the XML Information Set [Infoset].
Note: There may be some variations depending on the parser being used to build the DOM. For instance,
the DOM may not contain whitespaces in element content if the parser discards them.
The name "Document Object Model" was chosen because it is an "object model" in the traditional object
oriented design sense: documents are modeled using objects, and the model encompasses not only the
structure of a document, but also the behavior of a document and the objects of which it is composed. In
other words, the nodes in the above diagram do not represent a data structure, they represent objects,
which have functions and identity. As an object model, the DOM identifies:
12
What the Document Object Model is not
The structure of SGML documents has traditionally been represented by an abstract data model, not by an
object model. In an abstract data model, the model is centered around the data. In object oriented
programming languages, the data itself is encapsulated in objects that hide the data, protecting it from
direct external manipulation. The functions associated with these objects determine how the objects may
be manipulated, and they are part of the object model.
Although the Document Object Model was strongly influenced by "Dynamic HTML", in Level 1, it
does not implement all of "Dynamic HTML". In particular, events have not yet been defined. Level 1
is designed to lay a firm foundation for this kind of functionality by providing a robust, flexible
model of the document itself.
The Document Object Model is not a binary specification. DOM programs written in the same
language binding will be source code compatible across platforms, but the DOM does not define any
form of binary interoperability.
The Document Object Model is not a way of persisting objects to XML or HTML. Instead of
specifying how objects may be represented in XML, the DOM specifies how XML and HTML
documents are represented as objects, so that they may be used in object oriented programs.
The Document Object Model is not a set of data structures; it is an object model that specifies
interfaces. Although this document contains diagrams showing parent/child relationships, these are
logical relationships defined by the programming interfaces, not representations of any particular
internal data structures.
The Document Object Model does not define what information in a document is relevant or how
information in a document is structured. For XML, this is specified by the W3C XML Information
Set [Infoset]. The DOM is simply an API to this information set.
The Document Object Model, despite its name, is not a competitor to the Component Object Model
(COM). COM, like CORBA, is a language independent way to specify interfaces and objects; the
DOM is a set of interfaces and objects designed for managing HTML and XML documents. The
DOM may be implemented using language-independent systems like COM or CORBA; it may also
be implemented using language-specific bindings like the Java or ECMAScript bindings specified in
this document.
13
Entities and the DOM Core
document repositories. Several of these vendors had worked with SGML before XML was developed; as a
result, the DOM has been influenced by SGML Groves and the HyTime standard. Some of these vendors
had also developed their own object models for documents in order to provide an API for SGML/XML
editors or document repositories, and these object models have also influenced the DOM.
the "&" will be replaced by the character "&", and the text in the P element will form a single
continuous sequence of characters. Since numeric character references and pre-defined entities are not
recognized as such in CDATA sections, or in the SCRIPT and STYLE elements in HTML, they are not
replaced by the single character they appear to refer to. If the example above were enclosed in a CDATA
section, the "&" would not be replaced by "&"; neither would the <p> be recognized as a start tag.
The representation of general entities, both internal and external, are defined within the extended (XML)
interfaces of the Level 1 specification.
Note: When a DOM representation of a document is serialized as XML or HTML text, applications will
need to check each character in text data to see if it needs to be escaped using a numeric or pre-defined
entity. Failing to do so could result in invalid HTML or XML. Also, implementations should be aware of
the fact that serialization into a character encoding ("charset") that does not fully cover ISO 10646 may
fail if there are characters in markup or CDATA sections that are not present in the encoding.
Compliance
The Document Object Model Level 1 currently consists of two parts, DOM Core and DOM HTML. The
DOM Core represents the functionality used for XML documents, and also serves as the basis for DOM
HTML.
A compliant implementation of the DOM must implement all of the fundamental interfaces in the Core
chapter with the semantics as defined. Further, it must implement at least one of the HTML DOM and the
extended (XML) interfaces with the semantics as defined.
A DOM application can use the hasFeature method of the DOMImplementation [p.22] interface to
determine whether the module is supported or not. The feature strings for all modules in DOM Level 1 are
listed in the following table; (strings are case-insensitive):
14
DOM Interfaces and DOM Implementations
1. Attributes defined in the IDL do not imply concrete objects which must have specific data members -
in the language bindings, they are translated to a pair of get()/set() functions, not to a data member.
Read-only attributes have only a get() function in the language bindings.
2. DOM applications may provide additional interfaces and objects not found in this specification and
still be considered DOM compliant.
3. Because we specify interfaces and not the actual objects that are to be created, the DOM cannot know
what constructors to call for an implementation. In general, DOM users call the createX() methods on
the Document class to create document structures, and DOM implementations create their own
internal representations of these structures in their implementations of the createX() functions.
Limitations of Level 1
The DOM Level 1 specification is intentionally limited to those methods needed to represent and
manipulate document structure and content. The plan is for future Levels of the DOM specification to
provide:
1. A structure model for the internal subset and the external subset.
2. Validation against a schema.
3. Control for rendering documents via style sheets.
4. Access control.
5. Thread-safety.
6. Events.
15
Limitations of Level 1
16
1. Document Object Model Core
The DOM also specifies a NodeList [p.35] interface to handle ordered lists of Nodes [p.28] , such as
the children of a Node [p.28] , or the elements returned by the getElementsByTagName method of
the Element [p.43] interface, and also a NamedNodeMap [p.36] interface to handle unordered sets of
17
1.1.2. Memory Management
nodes referenced by their name attribute, such as the attributes of an Element. NodeList [p.35] and
NamedNodeMap [p.36] objects in the DOM are live; that is, changes to the underlying document
structure are reflected in all relevant NodeList and NamedNodeMap objects. For example, if a DOM
user gets a NodeList object containing the children of an Element [p.43] , then subsequently adds
more children to that element (or removes children, or modifies them), those changes are automatically
reflected in the NodeList, without further action on the user’s part. Likewise, changes to a Node [p.28]
in the tree are reflected in all references to that Node in NodeList and NamedNodeMap objects.
Finally, the interfaces Text [p.47] , Comment [p.48] , and CDATASection [p.48] all inherit from the
CharacterData [p.38] interface.
The DOM Level 1 API does not define a standard way to create DOMImplementation [p.22] or
Document [p.23] objects; DOM implementations must provide some proprietary way of bootstrapping
these DOM interfaces, and then all other objects can be built from there.
The Core DOM APIs are designed to be compatible with a wide range of languages, including both
general-user scripting languages and the more challenging languages used mostly by professional
programmers. Thus, the DOM APIs need to operate across a variety of memory management
philosophies, from language bindings that do not expose memory management to the user at all, through
those (notably Java) that provide explicit constructors but provide an automatic garbage collection
mechanism to automatically reclaim unused memory, to those (especially C/C++) that generally require
the programmer to explicitly allocate object memory, track where it is used, and explicitly free it for
re-use. To ensure a consistent API across these platforms, the DOM does not address memory
management issues at all, but instead leaves these for the implementation. Neither of the explicit language
bindings devised by the DOM Working Group (for ECMAScript and Java) require any memory
management methods, but DOM bindings for other languages (especially C or C++) may require such
support. These extensions will be the responsibility of those adapting the DOM API to a specific
language, not the DOM Working Group.
18
1.1.3. Naming Conventions
The Working Group has also attempted to be internally consistent in its use of various terms, even though
these may not be common distinctions in other APIs. For example, we use the method name "remove"
when the method changes the structural model, and the method name "delete" when the method gets rid of
something inside the structure model. The thing that is deleted is not returned. The thing that is removed
may be returned, when it makes sense to return it.
In practice, this means that there is a certain amount of redundancy in the API. The Working Group
considers the "inheritance" approach the primary view of the API, and the full set of functionality on
Node [p.28] to be "extra" functionality that users may employ, but that does not eliminate the need for
methods on other interfaces that an object-oriented analysis would dictate. (Of course, when the O-O
analysis yields an attribute or method that is identical to one on the Node interface, we don’t specify a
completely redundant one.) Thus, even though there is a generic nodeName attribute on the Node
interface, there is still a tagName attribute on the Element [p.43] interface; these two attributes must
contain the same value, but the Working Group considers it worthwhile to support both, given the
different constituencies the DOM API must satisfy.
19
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Applications must encode DOMString [p.19] using UTF-16 (defined in [Unicode] and Amendment
1 of [ISO/IEC 10646]).
The UTF-16 encoding was chosen because of its widespread industry practice. Note that for both
HTML and XML, the document character set (and therefore the notation of numeric character
references) is based on UCS [ISO-10646]. A single numeric character reference in a source
document may therefore in some cases correspond to two 16-bit units in a DOMString [p.19] (a
high surrogate and a low surrogate).
Note: Even though the DOM defines the name of the string type to be DOMString [p.19] , bindings
may use different names. For example for Java, DOMString is bound to the String type because
it also uses UTF-16 as its encoding.
Note: As of August 1998, the OMG IDL specification included a wstring type. However, that
definition did not meet the interoperability criteria of the DOM API since it relied on negotiation to decide
the width and encoding of a character.
Note: Besides case folding, there are additional normalizations that can be applied to text. The W3C I18N
Working Group is in the process of defining exactly which normalizations are necessary, and where they
should be applied. The W3C I18N Working Group expects to require early normalization, which means
that data read into the DOM is assumed to already be normalized. The DOM and applications built on top
of it in this case only have to assure that text remains normalized when being changed. For further details,
please see [Charmod].
Exception DOMException
DOM operations only raise exceptions in "exceptional" circumstances, i.e., when an operation is
impossible to perform (either for logical reasons, because data is lost, or because the implementation
has become unstable). In general, DOM methods return specific error values in ordinary processing
situations, such as out-of-bound errors when using NodeList [p.35] .
20
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Implementations may raise other exceptions under other circumstances. For example,
implementations may raise an implementation-dependent exception if a null argument is passed.
Some languages and object systems do not support the concept of exceptions. For such systems, error
conditions may be indicated using native error reporting mechanisms. For some bindings, for
example, methods may return error codes similar to those listed in the corresponding method
descriptions.
IDL Definition
exception DOMException {
unsigned short code;
};
// ExceptionCode
const unsigned short INDEX_SIZE_ERR = 1;
const unsigned short DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR = 2;
const unsigned short HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR = 3;
const unsigned short WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR = 4;
const unsigned short INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR = 5;
const unsigned short NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR = 6;
const unsigned short NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR = 7;
const unsigned short NOT_FOUND_ERR = 8;
const unsigned short NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR = 9;
const unsigned short INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR = 10;
Note: Other numeric codes are reserved for W3C for possible future use.
Defined Constants
DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR
If the specified range of text does not fit into a DOMString
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR
If any node is inserted somewhere it doesn’t belong
INDEX_SIZE_ERR
If index or size is negative, or greater than the allowed value
INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR
If an attempt is made to add an attribute that is already in use elsewhere
INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
If an invalid or illegal character is specified, such as in a name. See production 2 in
the XML specification for the definition of a legal character, and production 5 for the
definition of a legal name character.
NOT_FOUND_ERR
If an attempt is made to reference a node in a context where it does not exist
21
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR
If the implementation does not support the type of object requested
NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR
If data is specified for a node which does not support data
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
If an attempt is made to modify an object where modifications are not allowed
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
If a node is used in a different document than the one that created it (that doesn’t
support it)
Interface DOMImplementation
The DOMImplementation interface provides a number of methods for performing operations that
are independent of any particular instance of the document object model.
The DOM Level 1 does not specify a way of creating a document instance, and hence document
creation is an operation specific to an implementation. Future Levels of the DOM specification are
expected to provide methods for creating documents directly.
IDL Definition
interface DOMImplementation {
boolean hasFeature(in DOMString feature,
in DOMString version);
};
Methods
hasFeature
Test if the DOM implementation implements a specific feature.
Parameters
feature of type DOMString [p.19]
The name of the feature to test (case-insensitive). The values used by DOM features
are defined throughout this specification and listed in the Compliance [p.14] section.
The name must be an XML name [p.128] . 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 SYMM Working Group
defines the feature "org.w3c.dom.smil".
22
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Return Value
No Exceptions
Interface DocumentFragment
Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children of another Node [p.28] -- 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 [p.47] node. Such a structure model
represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML document.
When a DocumentFragment is inserted into a Document [p.23] (or indeed any other Node
[p.28] 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 [p.28] objects created have a ownerDocument attribute which associates them
23
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Attributes
doctype of type DocumentType [p.49] , readonly
The Document Type Declaration (see DocumentType [p.49] ) associated with this
document. For HTML documents as well as XML documents without a document type
declaration this returns null. The DOM Level 1 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 [p.28] interface, such as insertNode or
removeNode.
Methods
createAttribute
Creates an Attr [p.42] of the given name. Note that the Attr instance can then be set on
an Element [p.43] using the setAttributeNode method.
Parameters
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The name of the attribute.
24
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Return Value
Attr A new Attr object with the NodeName attribute set to name. The
[p.42] value of the attribute is the empty string.
Exceptions
createCDATASection
Creates a CDATASection [p.48] node whose value is the specified string.
Parameters
data of type DOMString [p.19]
The data for the CDATASection [p.48] contents.
Return Value
Exceptions
createComment
Creates a Comment [p.48] node given the specified string.
Parameters
data of type DOMString [p.19]
The data for the node.
Return Value
No Exceptions
createDocumentFragment
Creates an empty DocumentFragment [p.23] object.
Return Value
25
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
No Parameters
No Exceptions
createElement
Creates an element of the type specified. Note that the instance returned implements the
Element [p.43] interface, so attributes can be specified directly on the returned object.
In addition, if there are known attributes with default values, Attr [p.42] nodes
representing them are automatically created and attached to the element.
Parameters
tagName of type DOMString [p.19]
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
Exceptions
createEntityReference
Creates an EntityReference [p.52] 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 [p.51] node.
Parameters
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The name of the entity to reference.
Return Value
Exceptions
26
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
createProcessingInstruction
Creates a ProcessingInstruction [p.52] node given the specified name and data
strings.
Parameters
target of type DOMString [p.19]
The target part of the processing instruction.
Return Value
Exceptions
createTextNode
Creates a Text [p.47] node given the specified string.
Parameters
data of type DOMString [p.19]
The data for the node.
Return Value
No Exceptions
getElementsByTagName
Returns a NodeList [p.35] of all the Elements [p.43] 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 [p.19]
The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags.
Return Value
27
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
No Exceptions
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 [p.47] nodes may not have children, and adding children to such nodes results in a
DOMException [p.20] 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 [p.48] ), 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;
28
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Note: Numeric codes up to 200 are reserved to W3C for possible future use.
Defined Constants
ATTRIBUTE_NODE
The node is an Attr [p.42] .
CDATA_SECTION_NODE
The node is a CDATASection [p.48] .
COMMENT_NODE
The node is a Comment [p.48] .
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
The node is a DocumentFragment [p.23] .
DOCUMENT_NODE
The node is a Document [p.23] .
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
The node is a DocumentType [p.49] .
ELEMENT_NODE
The node is an Element [p.43] .
ENTITY_NODE
The node is an Entity [p.51] .
ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
The node is an EntityReference [p.52] .
NOTATION_NODE
The node is a Notation [p.50] .
29
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
The node is a ProcessingInstruction [p.52] .
TEXT_NODE
The node is a Text [p.47] node.
The values of nodeName, nodeValue, and attributes vary according to the node type as
follows:
Attributes
attributes of type NamedNodeMap [p.36] , readonly
A NamedNodeMap [p.36] containing the attributes of this node (if it is an Element
[p.43] ) or null otherwise.
30
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Exceptions on retrieval
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 [p.28]
The node to add.
If it is a DocumentFragment [p.23] object, the entire contents of the document
31
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Return Value
Exceptions
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 [p.43] 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 [p.47] 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 [p.52] clone are readonly [p.128] . In addition, clones of unspecified
Attr [p.42] nodes are specified. And, cloning Document [p.23] , DocumentType
[p.49] , Entity [p.51] , and Notation [p.50] 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 [p.43] ).
Return Value
Exceptions
32
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
hasChildNodes
This is a convenience method to allow easy determination of whether a node has any
children.
Return Value
boolean true if the node has any children, false if the node has no
children.
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 [p.23] 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 [p.28]
The node to insert.
Return Value
Exceptions
33
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
removeChild
Removes the child node indicated by oldChild from the list of children, and returns it.
Parameters
oldChild of type Node [p.28]
The node being removed.
Return Value
Exceptions
replaceChild
Replaces the child node oldChild with newChild in the list of children, and returns the
oldChild node.
If newChild is a DocumentFragment [p.23] 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 [p.28]
The new node to put in the child list.
34
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Return Value
Exceptions
Interface NodeList
The NodeList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of nodes, without
defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. NodeList objects in the DOM are live
[p.18] .
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
35
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Return Value
Node The node at the indexth position in the NodeList, or null if that
[p.28] 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 [p.35] ;
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.
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;
};
Methods
getNamedItem
Retrieves a node specified by name.
Parameters
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The nodeName of a node to retrieve.
Return Value
Node A Node (of any type) with the specified nodeName, or null if it
[p.28] does not identify any node in this map.
36
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
No Exceptions
item
Returns the indexth item in the map. If index is greater than or equal to the number of
nodes in this map, this returns null.
Parameters
index of type unsigned long
Index into this map.
Return Value
Node The node at the indexth position in the map, or null if that is not
[p.28] 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.
Parameters
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The nodeName of the node to remove.
Return Value
Node [p.28] The node removed from this map if a node with such a name exists.
Exceptions
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 [p.28]
A node to store in this map. The node will later be accessible using the value of its
nodeName attribute.
37
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Return Value
Node If the new Node replaces an existing node the replaced Node is
[p.28] returned, otherwise null is returned.
Exceptions
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 [p.47] and others do inherit the interface from it. All offsets in this interface start from 0.
As explained in the DOMString [p.19] 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 [p.125] 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
38
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Attributes
data of type DOMString [p.19]
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 [p.19] . In such cases, the user may call
substringData to retrieve the data in appropriately sized pieces.
Exceptions on setting
Exceptions on retrieval
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 [p.19] specified.
Parameters
arg of type DOMString [p.19]
The DOMString to append.
Exceptions
No Return Value
deleteData
Remove a range of 16-bit units [p.125] from the node. Upon success, data and length
reflect the change.
39
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The offset from which to start removing.
Exceptions
No Return Value
insertData
Insert a string at the specified 16-bit unit [p.125] offset.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The character offset at which to insert.
Exceptions
No Return Value
replaceData
Replace the characters starting at the specified 16-bit unit [p.125] offset with the specified
string.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
The offset from which to start replacing.
40
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Exceptions
No Return Value
substringData
Extracts a range of data from the node.
Parameters
offset of type unsigned long
Start offset of substring to extract.
Return Value
Exceptions
41
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Interface Attr
The Attr interface represents an attribute in an Element [p.43] object. Typically the allowable
values for the attribute are defined in a document type definition.
Attr objects inherit the Node [p.28] 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 [p.23] .
However, they can be associated with Element [p.43] 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 provide a representation in which entity references are not expanded. These child nodes may be
either Text [p.47] or EntityReference [p.52] nodes. Because the attribute type may be
unknown, there are no tokenized attribute values.
IDL Definition
interface Attr : Node {
readonly attribute DOMString name;
readonly attribute boolean specified;
// Modified in DOM Level 1:
attribute DOMString value;
// raises(DOMException) on setting
};
Attributes
name of type DOMString [p.19] , readonly
Returns the name of this attribute.
42
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
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 attribute is not associated to any element (i.e. because it was just created or was
obtained from some removal or cloning operation) specified is true.
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 [p.28] , 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 [p.42] 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.
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)
43
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
raises(DOMException);
NodeList getElementsByTagName(in DOMString name);
void normalize();
};
Attributes
tagName of type DOMString [p.19] , 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 [p.19]
The name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value
DOMString The Attr [p.42] value as a string, or the empty string if that
[p.19] attribute does not have a specified or default value.
No Exceptions
getAttributeNode
Retrieves an Attr [p.42] node by name.
Parameters
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The name of the attribute to retrieve.
Return Value
Attr The Attr node with the specified attribute name or null if there is
[p.42] no such attribute.
No Exceptions
getElementsByTagName
Returns a NodeList [p.35] of all descendant Elements with a given tag name, in the
order in which they would be encountered in a preorder traversal of the Element tree.
44
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Parameters
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags.
Return Value
No Exceptions
normalize
Puts all Text [p.47] nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree underneath this Element,
including attribute nodes, into a "normal" form where only markup (e.g., tags, comments,
processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity references) separates Text nodes,
i.e., there are no adjacent 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 [p.48] , the normalize
operation alone may not be sufficient, since XPointers do not differentiate between Text
[p.47] nodes and CDATASection [p.48] nodes.
No Parameters
No Return Value
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.
Parameters
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The name of the attribute to remove.
Exceptions
No Return Value
removeAttributeNode
Removes the specified attribute. If the removed Attr [p.42] has a default value it is
immediately replaced.
Parameters
45
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Return Value
Exceptions
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 [p.42] node plus any Text [p.47] and
EntityReference [p.52] nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use
setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.
Parameters
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The name of the attribute to create or alter.
Exceptions
No Return Value
setAttributeNode
Adds a new attribute node. If an attribute with that name is already present in the element,
it is replaced by the new one.
Parameters
46
1.2. Fundamental Interfaces
Return Value
Exceptions
Interface Text
The Text interface inherits from CharacterData [p.38] and represents the textual content
(termed character data in XML) of an Element [p.43] or Attr [p.42] . 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 [p.127]
(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 Element [p.43] 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. This node then only contains all the content up to the offset point. A new node
47
1.3. Extended Interfaces
of the same type, which is inserted as the next sibling of this node, contains all the content
at and after the offset point. 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 [p.125] offset at which to split, starting from 0.
Return Value
Text [p.47] The new node, of the same type as this node.
Exceptions
Interface Comment
This interface inherits from CharacterData [p.38] and represents the content of a comment, i.e.,
all the characters between the starting ’<!--’ and ending ’-->’. Note that this is the definition of a
comment in XML, and, in practice, HTML, although some HTML tools may implement the full
SGML comment structure.
IDL Definition
interface Comment : CharacterData {
};
A DOM application can use the hasFeature method of the DOMImplementation [p.22] interface to
determine whether they are supported or not. The feature string for all the interfaces listed in this section
is "XML" and the version is "1.0".
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.
48
1.3. Extended Interfaces
The DOMString [p.19] attribute of the Text [p.47] 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 [p.38] interface through the
Text [p.47] interface. Adjacent CDATASection nodes are not merged by use of the normalize
method on the Element [p.43] interface.
IDL Definition
interface CDATASection : Text {
};
Interface DocumentType
Each Document [p.23] has a doctype attribute whose value is either null or a DocumentType
object. The DocumentType interface in the DOM Level 1 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 scheme efforts on DTD representation are not clearly understood as of this writing.
Attributes
entities of type NamedNodeMap [p.36] , readonly
A NamedNodeMap [p.36] containing the general entities, both external and internal,
declared in the DTD. Parameter entities are not contained. Duplicates are discarded. For
example in:
49
1.3. Extended Interfaces
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 [p.51]
interface.
The DOM Level 1 does not support editing entities, therefore entities cannot be altered
in any way.
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 [p.28] is set to the declared name of the
notation.
The DOM Level 1 does not support editing Notation nodes; they are therefore readonly [p.128] .
Attributes
publicId of type DOMString [p.19] , readonly
The public identifier of this notation. If the public identifier was not specified, this is
null.
50
1.3. Extended Interfaces
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 [p.28] 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 [p.52] 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 resolution of the children of the Entity (the replacement value) may be lazily evaluated;
actions by the user (such as calling the childNodes method on the Entity Node) are assumed to
trigger the evaluation.
The DOM Level 1 does not support editing Entity nodes; if a user wants to make changes to the
contents of an Entity, every related EntityReference [p.52] 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 [p.128] .
Attributes
notationName of type DOMString [p.19] , readonly
For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the entity. For parsed entities, this is
null.
51
1.3. Extended Interfaces
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 [p.51]
node representing the referenced entity. If such an Entity exists, then the child list of the
EntityReference node is the same as that of the Entity node.
As for Entity [p.51] nodes, EntityReference nodes and all their descendants are readonly
[p.128] .
The resolution of the children of the EntityReference (the replacement value of the referenced
Entity [p.51] ) may be lazily evaluated; actions by the user (such as calling the childNodes
method on the EntityReference node) are assumed to trigger the evaluation.
IDL Definition
interface EntityReference : Node {
};
Interface ProcessingInstruction
};
Attributes
data of type DOMString [p.19]
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
52
2. Document Object Model HTML
2.1. Introduction
This section extends the Level 1 Core API to describe objects and methods specific to HTML documents
[HTML4.0]. In general, the functionality needed to manipulate hierarchical document structures,
elements, and attributes will be found in the core section; functionality that depends on the specific
elements defined in HTML will be found in this section.
to specialize and add functionality that relates specifically to HTML documents and elements.
to address issues of backwards compatibility with the DOM Level 0 [p.126] .
to provide convenience mechanisms, where appropriate, for common and frequent operations on
HTML documents.
The key differences between the core DOM and the HTML application of DOM is that the HTML
Document Object Model exposes a number of convenience methods and properties that are consistent
with the existing models and are more appropriate to script writers. In many cases, these enhancements are
not applicable to a general DOM because they rely on the presence of a predefined DTD. The transitional
and frameset DTDs for HTML 4.0 are assumed. Interoperability between implementations is only
guaranteed for elements and attributes that are specified in the HTML 4.0 DTDs.
More specifically, this document includes the following specializations for HTML:
An HTMLDocument interface, derived from the core Document [p.23] interface. HTMLDocument
[p.55] specifies the operations and queries that can be made on a HTML document.
An HTMLElement [p.59] interface, derived from the core Element [p.43] interface.
HTMLElement specifies the operations and queries that can be made on any HTML element.
Methods on HTMLElement include those that allow for the retrieval and modification of attributes
that apply to all HTML elements.
Specializations for all HTML elements that have attributes that extend beyond those specified in the
HTMLElement [p.59] interface. For all such attributes, the derived interface for the element
contains explicit methods for setting and getting the values.
The DOM Level 1 does not include mechanisms to access and modify style specified through CSS 1.
Furthermore, it does not define an event model for HTML documents. This functionality is planned to be
specified in a future Level of this specification.
53
2.2. HTML Application of Core DOM
The interfaces found within this section are not mandatory. A DOM application can use the
hasFeature method of the DOMImplementation [p.22] interface to determine whether they are
supported or not. The feature string for all the interfaces listed in this section is "HTML" and the version
is "1.0".
The interfaces in this specification are designed for HTML 4.0 documents, and not for XHTML
documents. Use of the HTML DOM with XHTML documents may result in incorrect processing; see
Appendix C11 in the [XHTML10] for more information.
54
2.4. Objects related to HTML documents
Attributes
length of type unsigned long, readonly
This attribute specifies the length or size of the list.
Methods
item
This method retrieves a node specified by ordinal index. Nodes are numbered in tree order
(depth-first traversal order).
Parameters
index of type unsigned long
The index of the node to be fetched. The index origin is 0.
Return Value
No Exceptions
namedItem
This method retrieves a Node [p.28] using a name. It first searches for a Node with a
matching id attribute. If it doesn’t find one, it then searches for a Node with a matching
name attribute, but only on those elements that are allowed a name attribute.
Parameters
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The name of the Node [p.28] to be fetched.
Return Value
Node The Node with a name or id attribute whose value corresponds to the
[p.28] specified string. Upon failure (e.g., no node with this name exists),
returns null.
No Exceptions
An HTMLDocument is the root of the HTML hierarchy and holds the entire content. Besides
providing access to the hierarchy, it also provides some convenience methods for accessing certain
sets of information from the document.
The following properties have been deprecated in favor of the corresponding ones for the BODY
element:
alinkColor
55
2.4. Objects related to HTML documents
background
bgColor
fgColor
linkColor
vlinkColor
IDL Definition
interface HTMLDocument : Document {
attribute DOMString title;
readonly attribute DOMString referrer;
readonly attribute DOMString domain;
readonly attribute DOMString URL;
attribute HTMLElement body;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection images;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection applets;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection links;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection forms;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection anchors;
attribute DOMString cookie;
void open();
void close();
void write(in DOMString text);
void writeln(in DOMString text);
Element getElementById(in DOMString elementId);
NodeList getElementsByName(in DOMString elementName);
};
Attributes
URL of type DOMString [p.19] , readonly
The complete URI of the document.
56
2.4. Objects related to HTML documents
Methods
close
Closes a document stream opened by open() and forces rendering.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
getElementById
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.
Parameters
elementId of type DOMString [p.19]
The unique id value for an element.
Return Value
No Exceptions
getElementsByName
Returns the (possibly empty) collection of elements whose name value is given by
elementName.
Parameters
57
2.4. Objects related to HTML documents
Return Value
No Exceptions
open
Note. This method and the ones following allow a user to add to or replace the structure
model of a document using strings of unparsed HTML. At the time of writing alternate
methods for providing similar functionality for both HTML and XML documents were
being considered. The following methods may be deprecated at some point in the future in
favor of a more general-purpose mechanism.
Open a document stream for writing. If a document exists in the target, this method clears
it.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
write
Write a string of text to a document stream opened by open(). The text is parsed into the
document’s structure model.
Parameters
text of type DOMString [p.19]
The string to be parsed into some structure in the document structure model.
No Return Value
No Exceptions
writeln
Write a string of text followed by a newline character to a document stream opened by
open(). The text is parsed into the document’s structure model.
Parameters
text of type DOMString [p.19]
The string to be parsed into some structure in the document structure model.
No Return Value
No Exceptions
58
2.5. HTML Elements
The attributes are exposed as properties for compatibility with DOM Level 0 [p.126] . This usage is
deprecated because it can not be generalized to all possible attribute names, as is required both for XML
and potentially for future versions of HTML. We recommend the use of generic methods on the core
Element interface for setting, getting and removing attributes.
The return value of an attribute that has a data type that is a value list is always capitalized, independent of
the case of the value in the source document. For example, if the value of the align attribute on a P
element is "left" then it is returned as "Left". For attributes with the CDATA data type, the case of the
return value is that given in the source document.
59
2.5.5. Object definitions
All HTML element interfaces derive from this class. Elements that only expose the HTML core
attributes are represented by the base HTMLElement interface. These elements are as follows:
HEAD
special: SUB, SUP, SPAN, BDO
font: TT, I, B, U, S, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL
phrase: EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ACRONYM, ABBR
list: DD, DT
NOFRAMES, NOSCRIPT
ADDRESS, CENTER
Note. The style attribute for this interface is reserved for future usage.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLElement : Element {
attribute DOMString id;
attribute DOMString title;
attribute DOMString lang;
attribute DOMString dir;
attribute DOMString className;
};
Attributes
className of type DOMString [p.19]
The class attribute of the element. This attribute has been renamed due to conflicts with the
"class" keyword exposed by many languages. See the class attribute definition in HTML
4.0.
Root of an HTML document. See the HTML element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
60
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
version of type DOMString [p.19]
Version information about the document’s DTD. See the version attribute definition in
HTML 4.0. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLHeadElement
Document head information. See the HEAD element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLHeadElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString profile;
};
Attributes
profile of type DOMString [p.19]
URI designating a metadata profile. See the profile attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLLinkElement
The LINK element specifies a link to an external resource, and defines this document’s relationship
to that resource (or vice versa). See the LINK element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLLinkElement : HTMLElement {
attribute boolean disabled;
attribute DOMString charset;
attribute DOMString href;
attribute DOMString hreflang;
attribute DOMString media;
attribute DOMString rel;
attribute DOMString rev;
attribute DOMString target;
attribute DOMString type;
};
Attributes
charset of type DOMString [p.19]
The character encoding of the resource being linked to. See the charset attribute definition
in HTML 4.0.
61
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLTitleElement
The document title. See the TITLE element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLTitleElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString text;
};
Attributes
text of type DOMString [p.19]
The specified title as a string.
Interface HTMLMetaElement
This contains generic meta-information about the document. See the META element definition in
HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLMetaElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString content;
attribute DOMString httpEquiv;
attribute DOMString name;
attribute DOMString scheme;
};
Attributes
content of type DOMString [p.19]
Associated information. See the content attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
62
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLBaseElement
Document base URI. See the BASE element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLBaseElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString href;
attribute DOMString target;
};
Attributes
href of type DOMString [p.19]
The base URI. See the href attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLIsIndexElement
This element is used for single-line text input. See the ISINDEX element definition in HTML 4.0.
This element is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLIsIndexElement : HTMLElement {
readonly attribute HTMLFormElement form;
attribute DOMString prompt;
};
Attributes
form of type HTMLFormElement [p.65] , readonly
Returns the FORM element containing this control. Returns null if this control is not
within the context of a form.
Interface HTMLStyleElement
63
2.5.5. Object definitions
Style information. A more detailed style sheet object model is planned to be defined in a separate
document. See the STYLE element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLStyleElement : HTMLElement {
attribute boolean disabled;
attribute DOMString media;
attribute DOMString type;
};
Attributes
disabled of type boolean
Enables/disables the style sheet.
Interface HTMLBodyElement
The HTML document body. This element is always present in the DOM API, even if the tags are not
present in the source document. See the BODY element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLBodyElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString aLink;
attribute DOMString background;
attribute DOMString bgColor;
attribute DOMString link;
attribute DOMString text;
attribute DOMString vLink;
};
Attributes
aLink of type DOMString [p.19]
Color of active links (after mouse-button down, but before mouse-button up). See the alink
attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
64
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLFormElement
The FORM element encompasses behavior similar to a collection and an element. It provides direct
access to the contained input elements as well as the attributes of the form element. See the FORM
element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLFormElement : HTMLElement {
readonly attribute HTMLCollection elements;
readonly attribute long length;
attribute DOMString name;
attribute DOMString acceptCharset;
attribute DOMString action;
attribute DOMString enctype;
attribute DOMString method;
attribute DOMString target;
void submit();
void reset();
};
Attributes
acceptCharset of type DOMString [p.19]
List of character sets supported by the server. See the accept-charset attribute definition in
HTML 4.0.
65
2.5.5. Object definitions
Methods
reset
Restores a form element’s default values. It performs the same action as a reset button.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
submit
Submits the form. It performs the same action as a submit button.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
Interface HTMLSelectElement
The select element allows the selection of an option. The contained options can be directly accessed
through the select element as a collection. See the SELECT element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLSelectElement : HTMLElement {
readonly attribute DOMString type;
attribute long selectedIndex;
attribute DOMString value;
readonly attribute long length;
readonly attribute HTMLFormElement form;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection options;
attribute boolean disabled;
attribute boolean multiple;
attribute DOMString name;
attribute long size;
attribute long tabIndex;
void add(in HTMLElement element,
in HTMLElement before)
raises(DOMException);
void remove(in long index);
void blur();
void focus();
};
66
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
disabled of type boolean
The control is unavailable in this context. See the disabled attribute definition in HTML
4.0.
Methods
add
Add a new element to the collection of OPTION elements for this SELECT.
Parameters
67
2.5.5. Object definitions
Exceptions
No Return Value
blur
Removes keyboard focus from this element.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
focus
Gives keyboard focus to this element.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
remove
Remove an element from the collection of OPTION elements for this SELECT. Does
nothing if no element has the given index.
Parameters
index of type long
The index of the item to remove, starting from 0.
No Return Value
No Exceptions
Interface HTMLOptGroupElement
Group options together in logical subdivisions. See the OPTGROUP element definition in HTML
4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLOptGroupElement : HTMLElement {
attribute boolean disabled;
attribute DOMString label;
};
68
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
disabled of type boolean
The control is unavailable in this context. See the disabled attribute definition in HTML
4.0.
Interface HTMLOptionElement
Attributes
defaultSelected of type boolean
Represents the value of the HTML selected attribute. The value of this attribute does not
change if the state of the corresponding form control, in an interactive user agent, changes.
Changing defaultSelected, however, resets the state of the form control. See the
selected attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
69
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLInputElement
Form control. Note. Depending upon the environment in which the page is being viewed, the value
property may be read-only for the file upload input type. For the "password" input type, the actual
value returned may be masked to prevent unauthorized use. See the INPUT element definition in
HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLInputElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString defaultValue;
attribute boolean defaultChecked;
readonly attribute HTMLFormElement form;
attribute DOMString accept;
attribute DOMString accessKey;
attribute DOMString align;
attribute DOMString alt;
attribute boolean checked;
attribute boolean disabled;
attribute long maxLength;
attribute DOMString name;
attribute boolean readOnly;
attribute DOMString size;
attribute DOMString src;
attribute long tabIndex;
readonly attribute DOMString type;
attribute DOMString useMap;
attribute DOMString value;
void blur();
void focus();
void select();
void click();
};
Attributes
accept of type DOMString [p.19]
A comma-separated list of content types that a server processing this form will handle
correctly. See the accept attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
70
2.5.5. Object definitions
71
2.5.5. Object definitions
Methods
blur
Removes keyboard focus from this element.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
click
Simulate a mouse-click. For INPUT elements whose type attribute has one of the
following values: "Button", "Checkbox", "Radio", "Reset", or "Submit".
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
focus
Gives keyboard focus to this element.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
72
2.5.5. Object definitions
select
Select the contents of the text area. For INPUT elements whose type attribute has one of
the following values: "Text", "File", or "Password".
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
Interface HTMLTextAreaElement
Multi-line text field. See the TEXTAREA element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLTextAreaElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString defaultValue;
readonly attribute HTMLFormElement form;
attribute DOMString accessKey;
attribute long cols;
attribute boolean disabled;
attribute DOMString name;
attribute boolean readOnly;
attribute long rows;
attribute long tabIndex;
readonly attribute DOMString type;
attribute DOMString value;
void blur();
void focus();
void select();
};
Attributes
accessKey of type DOMString [p.19]
A single character access key to give access to the form control. See the accesskey attribute
definition in HTML 4.0.
73
2.5.5. Object definitions
Methods
blur
Removes keyboard focus from this element.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
focus
Gives keyboard focus to this element.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
select
Select the contents of the TEXTAREA.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
Interface HTMLButtonElement
74
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
accessKey of type DOMString [p.19]
A single character access key to give access to the form control. See the accesskey attribute
definition in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLLabelElement
Form field label text. See the LABEL element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLLabelElement : HTMLElement {
readonly attribute HTMLFormElement form;
attribute DOMString accessKey;
attribute DOMString htmlFor;
};
75
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
accessKey of type DOMString [p.19]
A single character access key to give access to the form control. See the accesskey attribute
definition in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLFieldSetElement
Organizes form controls into logical groups. See the FIELDSET element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLFieldSetElement : HTMLElement {
readonly attribute HTMLFormElement form;
};
Attributes
form of type HTMLFormElement [p.65] , readonly
Returns the FORM element containing this control. Returns null if this control is not
within the context of a form.
Interface HTMLLegendElement
Provides a caption for a FIELDSET grouping. See the LEGEND element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLLegendElement : HTMLElement {
readonly attribute HTMLFormElement form;
attribute DOMString accessKey;
attribute DOMString align;
};
Attributes
accessKey of type DOMString [p.19]
A single character access key to give access to the form control. See the accesskey attribute
definition in HTML 4.0.
76
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLUListElement
Attributes
compact of type boolean
Reduce spacing between list items. See the compact attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This
attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLOListElement
Attributes
compact of type boolean
Reduce spacing between list items. See the compact attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This
attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLDListElement
77
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
compact of type boolean
Reduce spacing between list items. See the compact attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This
attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLDirectoryElement
Directory list. See the DIR element definition in HTML 4.0. This element is deprecated in HTML
4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLDirectoryElement : HTMLElement {
attribute boolean compact;
};
Attributes
compact of type boolean
Reduce spacing between list items. See the compact attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This
attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLMenuElement
Menu list. See the MENU element definition in HTML 4.0. This element is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLMenuElement : HTMLElement {
attribute boolean compact;
};
Attributes
compact of type boolean
Reduce spacing between list items. See the compact attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This
attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLLIElement
Attributes
type of type DOMString [p.19]
List item bullet style. See the type attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is
deprecated in HTML 4.0.
78
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLDivElement
Generic block container. See the DIV element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLDivElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString align;
};
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Horizontal text alignment. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is
deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLParagraphElement
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Horizontal text alignment. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is
deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLHeadingElement
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Horizontal text alignment. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is
deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLQuoteElement
For the Q and BLOCKQUOTE elements. See the Q element definition in HTML 4.0.
79
2.5.5. Object definitions
IDL Definition
interface HTMLQuoteElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString cite;
};
Attributes
cite of type DOMString [p.19]
A URI designating a source document or message. See the cite attribute definition in
HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLPreElement
Attributes
width of type long
Fixed width for content. See the width attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is
deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLBRElement
Attributes
clear of type DOMString [p.19]
Control flow of text around floats. See the clear attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This
attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLBaseFontElement
Base font. See the BASEFONT element definition in HTML 4.0. This element is deprecated in
HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLBaseFontElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString color;
attribute DOMString face;
attribute DOMString size;
};
80
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
color of type DOMString [p.19]
Font color. See the color attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is deprecated in
HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLFontElement
Local change to font. See the FONT element definition in HTML 4.0. This element is deprecated in
HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLFontElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString color;
attribute DOMString face;
attribute DOMString size;
};
Attributes
color of type DOMString [p.19]
Font color. See the color attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is deprecated in
HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLHRElement
81
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Align the rule on the page. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is
deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLModElement
Notice of modification to part of a document. See the INS and DEL element definitions in HTML
4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLModElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString cite;
attribute DOMString dateTime;
};
Attributes
cite of type DOMString [p.19]
A URI designating a document that describes the reason for the change. See the cite
attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLAnchorElement
82
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
accessKey of type DOMString [p.19]
A single character access key to give access to the form control. See the accesskey attribute
definition in HTML 4.0.
83
2.5.5. Object definitions
Methods
blur
Removes keyboard focus from this element.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
focus
Gives keyboard focus to this element.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
Interface HTMLImageElement
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Aligns this object (vertically or horizontally) with respect to its surrounding text. See the
align attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
84
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLObjectElement
Generic embedded object. Note. In principle, all properties on the object element are read-write but in
some environments some properties may be read-only once the underlying object is instantiated. See
the OBJECT element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLObjectElement : HTMLElement {
readonly attribute HTMLFormElement form;
attribute DOMString code;
attribute DOMString align;
attribute DOMString archive;
attribute DOMString border;
attribute DOMString codeBase;
attribute DOMString codeType;
attribute DOMString data;
attribute boolean declare;
85
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Aligns this object (vertically or horizontally) with respect to its surrounding text. See the
align attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
86
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLParamElement
Parameters fed to the OBJECT element. See the PARAM element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLParamElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString name;
attribute DOMString type;
attribute DOMString value;
attribute DOMString valueType;
};
Attributes
name of type DOMString [p.19]
The name of a run-time parameter. See the name attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
87
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLAppletElement
An embedded Java applet. See the APPLET element definition in HTML 4.0. This element is
deprecated in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLAppletElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString align;
attribute DOMString alt;
attribute DOMString archive;
attribute DOMString code;
attribute DOMString codeBase;
attribute DOMString height;
attribute DOMString hspace;
attribute DOMString name;
attribute DOMString object;
attribute DOMString vspace;
attribute DOMString width;
};
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Aligns this object (vertically or horizontally) with respect to its surrounding text. See the
align attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
88
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLMapElement
Client-side image map. See the MAP element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLMapElement : HTMLElement {
readonly attribute HTMLCollection areas;
attribute DOMString name;
};
Attributes
areas of type HTMLCollection [p.54] , readonly
The list of areas defined for the image map.
Interface HTMLAreaElement
Client-side image map area definition. See the AREA element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
89
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
accessKey of type DOMString [p.19]
A single character access key to give access to the form control. See the accesskey attribute
definition in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLScriptElement
90
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
charset of type DOMString [p.19]
The character encoding of the linked resource. See the charset attribute definition in HTML
4.0.
Interface HTMLTableElement
The create* and delete* methods on the table allow authors to construct and modify tables. HTML
4.0 specifies that only one of each of the CAPTION, THEAD, and TFOOT elements may exist in a
table. Therefore, if one exists, and the createTHead() or createTFoot() method is called, the method
returns the existing THead or TFoot element. See the TABLE element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLTableElement : HTMLElement {
attribute HTMLTableCaptionElement caption;
attribute HTMLTableSectionElement tHead;
attribute HTMLTableSectionElement tFoot;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection rows;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection tBodies;
attribute DOMString align;
attribute DOMString bgColor;
attribute DOMString border;
attribute DOMString cellPadding;
91
2.5.5. Object definitions
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Specifies the table’s position with respect to the rest of the document. See the align
attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
92
2.5.5. Object definitions
Methods
createCaption
Create a new table caption object or return an existing one.
Return Value
No Parameters
No Exceptions
createTFoot
Create a table footer row or return an existing one.
Return Value
No Parameters
No Exceptions
createTHead
Create a table header row or return an existing one.
Return Value
No Parameters
No Exceptions
93
2.5.5. Object definitions
deleteCaption
Delete the table caption, if one exists.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
deleteRow
Delete a table row.
Parameters
index of type long
The index of the row to be deleted. This index starts from 0 and is relative to all the
rows contained inside the table, regardless of section parentage.
Exceptions
No Return Value
deleteTFoot
Delete the footer from the table, if one exists.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
deleteTHead
Delete the header from the table, if one exists.
No Parameters
No Return Value
No Exceptions
insertRow
Insert a new empty row in the table. The new row is inserted immediately before and in the
same section as the current indexth row in the table. If index is equal to the number of
rows, the new row is appended. In addition, when the table is empty the row is inserted into
a TBODY which is created and inserted into the table. Note. A table row cannot be empty
according to HTML 4.0 Recommendation.
Parameters
index of type long
The row number where to insert a new row. This index starts from 0 and is relative to
all the rows contained inside the table, regardless of section parentage.
94
2.5.5. Object definitions
Return Value
Exceptions
Interface HTMLTableCaptionElement
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Caption alignment with respect to the table. See the align attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLTableColElement
Regroups the COL and COLGROUP elements. See the COL element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLTableColElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString align;
attribute DOMString ch;
attribute DOMString chOff;
attribute long span;
attribute DOMString vAlign;
attribute DOMString width;
};
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Horizontal alignment of cell data in column. See the align attribute definition in HTML
4.0.
95
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLTableSectionElement
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Horizontal alignment of data in cells. See the align attribute for HTMLTheadElement for
details.
Methods
deleteRow
Delete a row from this section.
Parameters
96
2.5.5. Object definitions
Exceptions
No Return Value
insertRow
Insert a row into this section. The new row is inserted immediately before the current
indexth row in this section. If index is equal to the number of rows in this section, the
new row is appended.
Parameters
index of type long
The row number where to insert a new row. This index starts from 0 and is relative
only to the rows contained inside this section, not all the rows in the table.
Return Value
Exceptions
Interface HTMLTableRowElement
97
2.5.5. Object definitions
raises(DOMException);
void deleteCell(in long index)
raises(DOMException);
};
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Horizontal alignment of data within cells of this row. See the align attribute definition in
HTML 4.0.
Methods
deleteCell
Delete a cell from the current row.
Parameters
index of type long
The index of the cell to delete, starting from 0.
Exceptions
98
2.5.5. Object definitions
No Return Value
insertCell
Insert an empty TD cell into this row. If index is equal to the number of cells, the new cell
is appended.
Parameters
index of type long
The place to insert the cell, starting from 0.
Return Value
Exceptions
Interface HTMLTableCellElement
The object used to represent the TH and TD elements. See the TD element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLTableCellElement : HTMLElement {
readonly attribute long cellIndex;
attribute DOMString abbr;
attribute DOMString align;
attribute DOMString axis;
attribute DOMString bgColor;
attribute DOMString ch;
attribute DOMString chOff;
attribute long colSpan;
attribute DOMString headers;
attribute DOMString height;
attribute boolean noWrap;
attribute long rowSpan;
attribute DOMString scope;
attribute DOMString vAlign;
attribute DOMString width;
};
Attributes
abbr of type DOMString [p.19]
Abbreviation for header cells. See the abbr attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
99
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLFrameSetElement
100
2.5.5. Object definitions
Create a grid of frames. See the FRAMESET element definition in HTML 4.0.
IDL Definition
interface HTMLFrameSetElement : HTMLElement {
attribute DOMString cols;
attribute DOMString rows;
};
Attributes
cols of type DOMString [p.19]
The number of columns of frames in the frameset. See the cols attribute definition in
HTML 4.0.
Interface HTMLFrameElement
Attributes
frameBorder of type DOMString [p.19]
Request frame borders. See the frameborder attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
101
2.5.5. Object definitions
Interface HTMLIFrameElement
Attributes
align of type DOMString [p.19]
Aligns this object (vertically or horizontally) with respect to its surrounding text. See the
align attribute definition in HTML 4.0. This attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.0.
102
2.5.5. Object definitions
103
2.5.5. Object definitions
104
Appendix A: Changes
Appendix A: Changes
Editors
Philippe Le Hégaret, W3C
This appendix contains the changes from the 1 October 1998 specification.
Each document contains zero or one doctype nodes, one root element node, and zero or more
comments or processing instructions; the root element serves as the root of the element tree for
the document.
One important property of DOM structure models is structural isomorphism: if any two
Document Object Model implementations are used to create a representation of the same
document, they will create the same structure model, with precisely the same objects and
relationships.
It now reads:
One important property of DOM structure models is structural isomorphism: if any two
Document Object Model implementations are used to create a representation of the same
document, they will create the same structure model, in accordance with the XML Information
Set [Infoset].
Note: There may be some variations depending on the parser being used to build the DOM. For
instance, the DOM may not contain whitespaces in element content if the parser discards them.
The compliance paragraph has been moved into a specific section (see Compliance [p.14] ).
What the Document Object Model is not [p.13]
The following statement has been modified:
The Document Object Model does not define "the true inner semantics" of XML or HTML. The
semantics of those languages are defined by W3C Recommendations for these languages. The
DOM is a programming model designed to respect these semantics. The DOM does not have
any ramifications for the way you write XML and HTML documents; any document that can be
105
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
It now reads:
The Document Object Model does not define what information in a document is relevant or how
information in a document is structured. For XML, this is specified by the W3C XML
Information Set [Infoset]. The DOM is simply an API to this information set.
Please note that for both HTML and XML, the document character set (and therefore the
notation of numeric character references) is based on UCS-4. A single numeric character
reference in a source document may therefore in some cases correspond to two array positions
in a DOMString [p.19] (a high surrogate and a low surrogate).
Please note that for both HTML and XML, the document character set (and therefore the
notation of numeric character references) is based on UCS [ISO-10646]. A single numeric
character reference in a source document may therefore in some cases correspond to two 16-bit
units in a DOMString [p.19] (a high surrogate and a low surrogate).
For the purposes of the DOM, string matching takes place on a character code by character code
basis, on the 16 bit value of a DOMString. As such, the DOM assumes that any normalizations
will take place in the processor, before the DOM structures are built.
For the purposes of the DOM, string matching is performed purely by binary comparison of the
16-bit units [p.125] of the DOMString. In addition, the DOM assumes that any normalizations
take place in the processor, before the DOM structures are built.
Note: Besides case folding, there are additional normalizations that can be applied to text. The W3C
I18N Working Group is in the process of defining exactly which normalizations are necessary, and
where they should be applied. The W3C I18N Working Group expects to require early normalization,
which means that data read into the DOM is assumed to already be normalized. The DOM and
applications built on top of it in this case only have to assure that text remains normalized when
106
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
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 [p.43] interface.
If the attribute is not associated to any element (i.e. because it was just created or was obtained
from some removal or cloning operation) specified is true.
As explained in the DOMString [p.19] 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 [p.125] is used
whenever necessary to indicate that indexing on CharacterData is done in 16-bit units.
The number of characters that are available through data and the substringData method
below.
It now reads:
The number of 16-bit units [p.125] that are available through data and the substringData
method below.
It now reads:
The specified substring. If the sum of offset and count exceeds the length, then all
characters to the end of the data are returned.
107
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
It now reads:
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.
Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of characters in data, or if
the specified count is negative.
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.
Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of characters in data, or if
the specified count is negative.
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.
108
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
The number of characters to delete. If the sum of offset and count exceeds length then
all characters from offset to the end of the data are deleted.
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.
Replace the characters starting at the specified character offset with the specified string.
Replace the characters starting at the specified 16-bit unit [p.125] offset with the specified
string.
The number of characters to replace. If the sum of offset and count exceeds length, then
all characters to the end of the data are replaced
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
Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of characters in data, or if
the specified count is negative.
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.
The package name of the feature to test. In Level 1, the legal values are "HTML" and "XML"
(case-insensitive).
109
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
The name of the feature to test (case-insensitive). The values used by DOM features are defined
throughout this specification and listed i n the Compliance [p.14] section. The name must be an
XML name [p.128] . 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 SYMM
Working Group defines the feature "org.w3c.dom.smil".
This is the version number of the package name to test. In Level 1, this is the string "1.0".
This is the version number of the feature to test. In Level 1, this is the string "1.0".
In addition, if there are known attributes with default values, Attr nodes representing them are
automatically created and attached to the element.
The description of the createEntityReference method was missing the following piece:
In addition, if the referenced entity is known, the child list of the EntityReference [p.52]
node is made the same as that of the corresponding Entity [p.51] node.
The description of the doctype attribute was missing the following piece:
The DOM Level 1 does not support editing the Document Type Declaration, therefore
docType cannot be altered in any way, including through the use of methods, such as
insertNode or removeNode, which are inherited from the Node [p.28] interface.
Creates an Attr [p.42] of the given name. Note that the Attr instance can then be set on an
Element [p.43] using the setAttribute method.
it is now:
Creates an Attr [p.42] of the given name. Note that the Attr instance can then be set on an
Element [p.43] using the setAttributeNode method.
110
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
A NamedNodeMap [p.36] containing the general entities, both external and internal, declared
in the DTD. Duplicates are discarded.
It now reads:
A NamedNodeMap [p.36] containing the general entities, both external and internal, declared
in the DTD. Parameter entities are not contained. Duplicates are discarded.
the interface provides access to foo and bar but not baz. [ ...]
It is now:
<!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. [...]
By far the vast majority of objects (apart from text) that authors encounter when traversing a
document are Element [p.43] nodes. Assume the following XML document:
111
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
<elementExample id="demo">
<subelement1/>
<subelement2><subsubelement/></subelement2>
</elementExample>
When represented using DOM, the top node is a Document [p.23] node containing an
Element [p.43] node for "elementExample" which contains two child Element nodes, one
for "subelement1" and one for "subelement2". "subelement1" contains no child nodes.
the generic Node interface method getAttributes may be used to retrieve the set of all
attributes for an element.
However, there is no getAttributes method per se, although it may exist in some language
binding such as the java one. So this section now reads:
the generic Node interface attribute attributes may be used to retrieve the set of all
attributes for an element.
If the removed attribute is known to have a default value, an attribute immediately appears
containing the default value.
Removes the specified attribute. If the removed Attr [p.42] has a default value it is
immediately replaced.
The description of the oldAttr has been chagned according to the previous change:
The Attr [p.42] node to remove from the attribute list. If the removed Attr has a default
value it is immediately replaced.
112
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
In addition, the following note was added to the description of the normalize method:
Note: In cases where the document contains CDATASections [p.48] , the normalize operation
alone may not be sufficient, since XPointers do not differentiate between Text [p.47] nodes
and CDATASection [p.48] nodes.
And the following change was made to the description of the same method:
Puts all Text [p.47] nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree underneath this Element [p.43]
into a "normal" form where only markup (e.g., tags, comments, processing instructions,
CDATA sections, and entity references) separates Text nodes, i.e., there are no adjacent Text
nodes.
Puts all Text [p.47] nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree underneath this Element [p.43] ,
including attribute nodes, into a "normal" form where only markup (e.g., tags, comments,
processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity references) separates Text nodes, i.e.,
there are no adjacent Text nodes.
The exception INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR for the setAttribute method was said to be:
If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute with the same name, the previously
existing Attr [p.42] node is returned, otherwise null is returned.
If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute, the replaced Attr [p.42] node is
returned, otherwise null is returned.
113
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
Note: Other numeric codes are reserved for W3C for possible future use.
If an invalid or illegal character is specified, such as in a name. See production 2 in the XML
specification for the definition of a legal character, and production 5 for the definition of a legal
name character.
If a node with that name is already present in this map, it is replaced by the new one.
The node removed from the map or null if no node with such a name exists.
But this error case is already handled by having the method to throw a NOT_FOUND_ERR
DOMException. So this section now simply reads:
The node removed from the map if a node with such a name exists.
The description of the removeNamedItem method now includes the following note that was
missing:
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.
Numeric codes up to 200 are reserved to W3C for possible future use.
114
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
The content of the returned NodeList [p.35] is "live" in the sense that, for instance, changes to
the children of the node object that it was created from are immediately reflected in the nodes
returned by the NodeList accessors; it is not a static snapshot of the content of the node. This
is true for every NodeList, including the ones returned by the getElementsByTagName
method.
It now reads:
Raised if this node is readonly or if the parent of the node being inserted is readonly.
It now reads:
Note that cloning an immutable subtree results in a mutable copy, but the children of an
EntityReference [p.52] clone are readonly [p.128] . In addition, clones of unspecified
Attr [p.42] nodes are specified. And, cloning Document [p.23] , DocumentType [p.49] ,
Entity [p.51] , and Notation [p.50] nodes is implementation dependent.
115
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
This represents the content of a comment, i.e., all the characters between the starting ’<!--’
and ending ’-->’.
It now reads "This interface inherits from CharacterData and represents ...".
Section 1.2 Interface Text [p.47]
The first paragraph read:
The Text [p.47] interface represents the textual content (termed character data in XML) of an
Element [p.43] or Attr [p.42] .
It now reads "The Text interface inherits from CharacterData and represents ...".
The first paragraph read:
If there is markup, it is parsed into a list of elements and Text [p.47] nodes that form the list of
children of the element.
It has been clarified, now reads "into the information items (elements, children comments, etc.) and
...".
The last sentence of the second paragraph of the interface description read:
The normalize() method on Element [p.43] merges any such adjacent Text [p.47]
objects into a single node for each block of text; this is recommended before employing
operations that depend on a particular document structure, such as navigation with
XPointers.
However, since in cases where the document contains CDATASections [p.48] , the normalize
operation alone may not be sufficient, since XPointers do not differentiate between Text [p.47]
nodes and CDATASection [p.48] nodes, the last part of the sentence (after the semi-colon) was
dropped.
The following sentence was added, for clarification purpose, to the description of the splitText
method:
When the offset is equal to the length of this node, the new Text [p.47] node has no data.
Breaks this Text [p.47] node into two Text at the specified offset, ...
116
A.2: Changes in the Document Object Model Core
It now reads:
It now reads:
Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of characters in data.
Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data.
A DOM application can use the hasFeature method of the DOMImplementation [p.22]
interface to determine whether they are supported or not. The feature string for all the interfaces
listed in this section is "XML".
117
A.3: Changes in the Document Object Model HTML
Entity [p.51] nodes and all their descendants are readonly [p.128] .
As for Entity [p.51] nodes, EntityReference [p.52] nodes and all their descendants are
readonly [p.128] .
Interoperability between implementations is only guaranteed for elements and attributes that are
specified in these DTDs.
This seemed to imply interoperability is not guaranteed for the HTML 4.0 strict DTD, so it was
changed to:
Interoperability between implementations is only guaranteed for elements and attributes that are
specified in the HTML 4.0 DTDs.
value "Text", "File" or "Password", this represents the HTML value attribute of the element.
The value of this attribute does not change if the contents of the corresponding form control in
an interactive user agent changes. Changing this attribute, however, resets the contents of the
form control. See the value attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
118
A.3: Changes in the Document Object Model HTML
When the type attribute of the element has the value "Text", "File" or "Password", this
represents the current contents of the corresponding form control in an interactive user agent.
Changing this attribute changes the contents of the form control, but does not change the value
of the HTML value attribute of the element. When the type attribute of the element has the
value "Button", "Hidden", "Submit", "Reset", "Image", "Checkbox" or "Radio", this represents
the HTML value attribute of the element. See the value attribute definition in HTML 4.0.
When the type attribute of the element has the value "Checkbox" or "Radio", this represents
the HTML checked attribute of the element. The value of this attribute does not change if the
state of the corresponding form control in an interactive user agent changes. Changes to this
attribute, however, resets the state of the form control. See the checked attribute definition in
HTML 4.0.
When the type attribute of the element has the value "Checkbox" or "Radio", this represents
the current state of the corresponding form control in am interactive user agent. Changes to this
attribute changes the state of the form control, but does not change the value of the HTML value
attribute of the element.
Represents the value of the HTML selected attribute. The value of this attribute does not change
if the state of the corresponding form control in an interactive user agent changes. Changing
defaultSelected, however, resets the state of the form control. See the selected attribute
definition in HTML 4.0.
Represents the current state of the corresponding form control in an interactive user agent.
Changing this attribute changes the state of the form control, but does not change the value of
the HTML selected attribute of the element.
119
A.3: Changes in the Document Object Model HTML
The element to insert before, or null for the head of the list.
The element to insert before, or null for the tail of the list.
Finally, it was added that an NOT_FOUND_ERR DOMException [p.20] is raised when the
before given to the add method is not a descendant of the SELECT element.
Section 2.5.5 Interface HTMLTableCellElement [p.99]
The cellIndex attribute was changed to readonly and it was added that it starts from 0.
Section 2.5.5 Interface HTMLTableElement [p.91]
The description of the index parameter of the insertRow and deleteRow methods was
augmented with the following:
This index starts from 0 and is relative to all the rows contained inside the table, regardless of
section parentage.
In addition, the following was added to the description of the insertRow method:
The new row is inserted immediately before and in the same section as the current indexth row
in the table. If there is no such row, the row is inserted following the one before in the table.
Finally, when the table is empty the row is inserted into a TBODY which is created and inserted
into the table.
Finally, it was added that an INDEX_SIZE_ERR DOMException [p.20] is raised when the index
given to the insertRow method is greater than the number of rows, and when the index given to
the deleteRow method is greater than or equal to the number of rows. In both case, the exception is
also raised if the index is negative.
Section 2.5.5 Interface HTMLTableRowElement [p.97]
The rowIndex, selectionRowIndex, and cells attributes were changed to readonly. And it
was added that these indexes start from 0.
It was added that the index parameter of the insertCell and deleteCell methods starts from
0.
The following sentence was added to the description of the insertCell:
In addition, it was added that an INDEX_SIZE_ERR DOMException [p.20] is raised when the
index given to the insertCell method is greater than the number of cells and when the index
given to the deleteCell method is greater than or equal to the number of cells. In both case, the
exception is also raised if the index is negative.
Section 2.5.5 Interface HTMLTableSectionElement [p.96]
The description of the index parameter of the insertRow and deleteRow methods was
augmented with the following:
This index starts from 0 and is relative only to the rows contained inside this section, not all the
rows in the table.
120
A.4: Changes in the Appendices
In addition, it was added that an INDEX_SIZE_ERR DOMException [p.20] is raised when the
index given to the insertRow method is greater than the number of rows, and when the index
given to the deleteRow method is greater than or equal to the number of rows. In both case, the
exception is also raised if the index is negative.
Section 2.5.5 Interface HTMLTextArea [p.73]
The value of the type attribute is now defined to be the string "textarea".
The description of the defaultValue attribute was unclear, it now reads:
Represents the contents of the element. The value of this attribute does not change if the
contents of the corresponding form control in an interactive user agent changes. Changing this
attribute, however, resets the contents of the form control.
Represents the current contents of the corresponding form control in an interactive user agent.
Changing this attribute changes the contents of the form control, but does not change the
contents of the element.
121
A.4: Changes in the Appendices
122
Appendix E: Acknowledgements
Appendix E: Acknowledgements
The authors of this specification, members of the DOM Working Group, deserve much credit for their
hard work: Lauren Wood (SoftQuad, Inc., chair), Arnaud Le Hors (W3C, W3C staff contact), Andrew
Watson (Object Management Group), Bill Smith (Sun), Chris Lovett (Microsoft), Chris Wilson
(Microsoft), David Brownell (Sun), David Singer (IBM), Don Park (invited), Eric Vasilik (Microsoft),
Gavin Nicol (INSO), Ian Jacobs (W3C), James Clark (invited), Jared Sorensen (Novell), Jonathan Robie
(Texcel Research and Software AG), Mike Champion (ArborText and Software AG), Paul Grosso
(ArborText), Peter Sharpe (SoftQuad, Inc.), Phil Karlton (Netscape), Ray Whitmer (iMall), Rich Rollman
(Microsoft), Rick Gessner (Netscape), Robert Sutor (IBM), Scott Isaacs (Microsoft), Sharon Adler
(INSO), Steve Byrne (JavaSoft), Tim Bray (invited), Tom Pixley (Netscape), Vidur Apparao (Netscape).
Thanks to all those who have helped to improve this specification by sending suggestions and corrections.
Thanks to Joe English, author of cost, which was used as the basis for producing DOM Level 1. Thanks
also to Gavin Nicol, who wrote the scripts which run on top of cost. Arnaud Le Hors and Philippe Le
Hégaret maintained the scripts.
For DOM Level 1 Second edition, we used Xerces as the basis DOM implementation and wish to thank
the authors. Philippe Le Hégaret and Arnaud Le Hors wrote the Java programs which are the DOM
application.
Thanks to Jan Kärrman, author of html2ps for helping so much in creating the Postscript version of the
specification.
123
Appendix E: Acknowledgements
124
Glossary
Glossary
Editors
Robert S. Sutor, IBM Research
Several of the following term definitions have been borrowed or modified from similar definitions in other
W3C or standards documents. See the links within the definitions for more information.
16-bit unit
The base unit of a DOMString [p.19] . This indicates that indexing on a DOMString occurs in
units of 16 bits. This must not be misunderstood to mean that a DOMString can store arbitrary
16-bit units. A DOMString is a character string encoded in UTF-16; this means that the restrictions
of UTF-16 as well as the other relevant restrictions on character strings must be maintained. A single
character, for example in the form of a numeric character reference, may correspond to one or two
16-bit units.
For more information, see [Unicode] and [ISO/IEC 10646].
ancestor
An ancestor node of any node A is any node above A in a tree model of a document, where "above"
means "toward the root."
API
An API is an application programming interface, a set of functions or methods used to access some
functionality.
child
A child is an immediate descendant node of a node.
client application
A [client] application is any software that uses the Document Object Model programming interfaces
provided by the hosting implementation to accomplish useful work. Some examples of client
applications are scripts within an HTML or XML document.
COM
COM is Microsoft’s Component Object Model [COM], a technology for building applications from
binary software components.
content model
The content model is a simple grammar governing the allowed types of the child elements and the
order in which they appear. See Element Content in XML [XML].
context
A context specifies an access pattern (or path): a set of interfaces which give you a way to interact
with a model. For example, imagine a model with different colored arcs connecting data nodes. A
context might be a sheet of colored acetate that is placed over the model allowing you a partial view
of the total information in the model.
convenience
A convenience method is an operation on an object that could be accomplished by a program
consisting of more basic operations on the object. Convenience methods are usually provided to
make the API easier and simpler to use or to allow specific programs to create more optimized
implementations for common operations. A similar definition holds for a convenience property.
125
Glossary
cooked model
A model for a document that represents the document after it has been manipulated in some way. For
example, any combination of any of the following transformations would create a cooked model:
1. Expansion of internal text entities.
2. Expansion of external entities.
3. Model augmentation with style-specified generated text.
4. Execution of style-specified reordering.
5. Execution of scripts.
A browser might only be able to provide access to a cooked model, while an editor might provide
access to a cooked or the initial structure model (also known as the uncooked model) for a document.
CORBA
CORBA is the Common Object Request Broker Architecture from the OMG [CORBA]. This
architecture is a collection of objects and libraries that allow the creation of applications containing
objects that make and receive requests and responses in a distributed environment.
cursor
A cursor is an object representation of a node. It may possess information about context and the path
traversed to reach the node.
data model
A data model is a collection of descriptions of data structures and their contained fields, together
with the operations or functions that manipulate them.
deprecation
When new releases of specifications are released, some older features may be marked as being
deprecated. This means that new work should not use the features and that although they are
supported in the current release, they may not be supported or available in future releases.
descendant
A descendant node of any node A is any node below A in a tree model of a document, where "above"
means "toward the root."
DOM Level 0
The term "DOM Level 0" refers to a mix (not formally specified) of HTML document functionalities
offered by Netscape Navigator version 3.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.0. In some
cases, attributes or methods have been included for reasons of backward compatibility with "DOM
Level 0".
ECMAScript
The programming language defined by the ECMA-262 standard [ECMAScript]. As stated in the
standard, the originating technology for ECMAScript was JavaScript [JavaScript]. Note that in the
ECMAScript binding, the word "property" is used in the same sense as the IDL term "attribute."
element
Each document contains one or more elements, the boundaries of which are either delimited by
start-tags and end-tags, or, for empty elements by an empty-element tag. Each element has a type,
identified by name, and may have a set of attributes. Each attribute has a name and a value. See
Logical Structures in XML [XML].
event propagation, also known as event bubbling
This is the idea that an event can affect one object and a set of related objects. Any of the potentially
affected objects can block the event or substitute a different one (upward event propagation). The
event is broadcast from the node at which it originates to every parent node.
126
Glossary
equivalence
Two nodes are equivalent if they have the same node type and same node name. Also, if the nodes
contain data, that must be the same. Finally, if the nodes have attributes the collection of attribute
names must be the same and the attributes corresponding by name must be equivalent as nodes.
Two nodes are deeply equivalent if they are equivalent, their child node lists are equivalent are
equivalent as NodeList [p.35] objects, and their attributes are deeply equivalent.
Two NodeList [p.35] objects are equivalent if they have the same length, and the nodes
corresponding by index are deeply equivalent.
Two NamedNodeMap [p.36] objects are equivalent if they have the same length, they have same
collection of names, and the nodes corresponding by name in the maps are deeply equivalent.
Two DocumentType [p.49] nodes are equivalent if they are equivalent as nodes, have the same
names, and have equivalent entities and attributes NamedNodeMap [p.36] objects.
information item
An information item is an abstract representation of some component of an XML document. See the
[Infoset] for details.
hosting implementation
A [hosting] implementation is a software module that provides an implementation of the DOM
interfaces so that a client application can use them. Some examples of hosting implementations are
browsers, editors and document repositories.
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used to create hypertext
documents that are portable from one platform to another. HTML documents are SGML documents
with generic semantics that are appropriate for representing information from a wide range of
applications. [HTML3.2] [HTML4.0]
IDL
An Interface Definition Language (IDL) is used to define the interfaces for accessing and operating
objects. Examples of IDLs are the Object Management Group’s IDL [CORBA], Microsoft’s IDL
[MIDL], and Sun’s Java IDL [JavaIDL].
implementor
Companies, organizations, and individuals that claim to support the Document Object Model as an
API for their products.
inheritance
In object-oriented programming, the ability to create new classes (or interfaces) that contain all the
methods and properties of another class (or interface), plus additional methods and properties. If class
(or interface) D inherits from class (or interface) B, then D is said to be derived from B. B is said to
be a base class (or interface) for D. Some programming languages allow for multiple inheritance, that
is, inheritance from more than one class or interface.
initial structure model
Also known as the raw structure model or the uncooked model, this represents the document before it
has been modified by entity expansions, generated text, style-specified reordering, or the execution of
scripts. In some implementations, this might correspond to the "initial parse tree" for the document, if
it ever exists. Note that a given implementation might not be able to provide access to the initial
structure model for a document, though an editor probably would.
interface
An interface is a declaration of a set of methods with no information given about their
implementation. In object systems that support interfaces and inheritance, interfaces can usually
127
Glossary
128
Appendix B: IDL Definitions
Unfortunately the OMG IDL for the Document Object Model HTML is not compliant because of
problems in the validator that was used to validate Level 1. The readOnly attribute on the
HTMLInputElement [p.70] and HTMLTextAreaElement [p.73] interfaces, as well as the object
attribute on the HTMLAppletElement [p.88] interface, are not compliant with OMG IDL 2.2.
dom.idl:
// File: dom.idl
#ifndef _DOM_IDL_
#define _DOM_IDL_
interface NodeList;
interface NamedNodeMap;
interface Document;
exception DOMException {
unsigned short code;
};
// ExceptionCode
const unsigned short INDEX_SIZE_ERR = 1;
const unsigned short DOMSTRING_SIZE_ERR = 2;
const unsigned short HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR = 3;
const unsigned short WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR = 4;
const unsigned short INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR = 5;
const unsigned short NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR = 6;
const unsigned short NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR = 7;
const unsigned short NOT_FOUND_ERR = 8;
const unsigned short NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR = 9;
const unsigned short INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR = 10;
interface DOMImplementation {
boolean hasFeature(in DOMString feature,
129
dom.idl:
in DOMString version);
};
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;
interface NodeList {
Node item(in unsigned long index);
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
};
interface NamedNodeMap {
Node getNamedItem(in DOMString name);
Node setNamedItem(in Node arg)
raises(DOMException);
130
dom.idl:
};
131
dom.idl:
raises(DOMException);
};
};
132
B.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
#endif // _DOM_IDL_
#ifndef _HTML_IDL_
#define _HTML_IDL_
#include "dom.idl"
interface HTMLElement;
interface HTMLFormElement;
interface HTMLTableCaptionElement;
interface HTMLTableSectionElement;
interface HTMLCollection {
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
Node item(in unsigned long index);
Node namedItem(in DOMString name);
};
133
html.idl:
134
html.idl:
135
html.idl:
};
136
html.idl:
137
html.idl:
138
html.idl:
139
html.idl:
140
html.idl:
};
141
html.idl:
#endif // _HTML_IDL_
142
Appendix C: Java Language Binding
org/w3c/dom/DOMImplementation.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/DocumentFragment.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
143
org/w3c/dom/Document.java:
org/w3c/dom/Document.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/Node.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
144
org/w3c/dom/NodeList.java:
org/w3c/dom/NodeList.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
145
org/w3c/dom/NamedNodeMap.java:
org/w3c/dom/NamedNodeMap.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/CharacterData.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
146
org/w3c/dom/Attr.java:
org/w3c/dom/Attr.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/Element.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/Text.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
147
org/w3c/dom/Comment.java:
org/w3c/dom/Comment.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/CDATASection.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/DocumentType.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/Notation.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/Entity.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
148
C.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
org/w3c/dom/EntityReference.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
org/w3c/dom/ProcessingInstruction.java:
package org.w3c.dom;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLDocument.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
149
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
150
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLHtmlElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLHtmlElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLHeadElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLLinkElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
151
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTitleElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTitleElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLMetaElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLBaseElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLIsIndexElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
152
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLStyleElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLStyleElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLBodyElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLFormElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
153
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLSelectElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLSelectElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
import org.w3c.dom.DOMException;
154
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLOptGroupElement.java:
HTMLElement before)
throws DOMException;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLOptGroupElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLOptionElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
155
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLInputElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLInputElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
156
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTextAreaElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTextAreaElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
157
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLButtonElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLButtonElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLLabelElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLFieldSetElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
158
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLLegendElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLLegendElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLUListElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLOListElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLDListElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
159
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLDirectoryElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLDirectoryElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLMenuElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLLIElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLDivElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLParagraphElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
160
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLHeadingElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLHeadingElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLQuoteElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLPreElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLBRElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLBaseFontElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
161
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLFontElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLFontElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLHRElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLModElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
162
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLAnchorElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLAnchorElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLImageElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
163
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLObjectElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLObjectElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
164
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLParamElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLParamElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
165
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLAppletElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLAppletElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLMapElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
166
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLAreaElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLAreaElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLScriptElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
167
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
import org.w3c.dom.DOMException;
168
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableCaptionElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableCaptionElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableColElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
169
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableSectionElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableSectionElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
import org.w3c.dom.DOMException;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableRowElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
import org.w3c.dom.DOMException;
170
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableCellElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLTableCellElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
171
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLFrameSetElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLFrameSetElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLFrameElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
172
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLIFrameElement.java:
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLIFrameElement.java:
package org.w3c.dom.html;
173
org/w3c/dom/html/HTMLIFrameElement.java:
174
Appendix D: ECMA Script Language Binding
175
D.1: Document Object Model Level 1 Core
createAttribute(name)
This method returns a Attr object.
The name parameter is of type String.
createEntityReference(name)
This method returns a EntityReference object.
The name parameter is of type String.
getElementsByTagName(tagname)
This method returns a NodeList object.
The tagname parameter is of type String.
Prototype Object Node
The Node class has the following constants:
Node.ELEMENT_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 1.
Node.ATTRIBUTE_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 2.
Node.TEXT_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 3.
Node.CDATA_SECTION_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 4.
Node.ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 5.
Node.ENTITY_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 6.
Node.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 7.
Node.COMMENT_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 8.
Node.DOCUMENT_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 9.
Node.DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 10.
Node.DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 11.
Node.NOTATION_NODE
This constant is of type Number and its value is 12.
Object Node
The Node object has the following properties:
nodeName
This read-only property is of type String.
nodeValue
This property is of type String.
nodeType
This read-only property is of type Number.
parentNode
This read-only property is a Node object.
176
D.1: Document Object Model Level 1 Core
childNodes
This read-only property is a NodeList object.
firstChild
This read-only property is a Node object.
lastChild
This read-only property is a Node object.
previousSibling
This read-only property is a Node object.
nextSibling
This read-only property is a Node object.
attributes
This read-only property is a NamedNodeMap object.
ownerDocument
This read-only property is a Document object.
The Node object has the following methods:
insertBefore(newChild, refChild)
This method returns a Node object.
The newChild parameter is a Node object.
The refChild parameter is a Node object.
replaceChild(newChild, oldChild)
This method returns a Node object.
The newChild parameter is a Node object.
The oldChild parameter is a Node object.
removeChild(oldChild)
This method returns a Node object.
The oldChild parameter is a Node object.
appendChild(newChild)
This method returns a Node object.
The newChild parameter is a Node object.
hasChildNodes()
This method returns a Boolean.
cloneNode(deep)
This method returns a Node object.
The deep parameter is of type Boolean.
Object NodeList
The NodeList object has the following properties:
length
This read-only property is of type Number.
The NodeList object has the following methods:
item(index)
This method returns a Node object.
The index parameter is of type Number.
Note: This object can also be dereferenced using square bracket notation (e.g. obj[1]).
Dereferencing with an integer index is equivalent to invoking the item method with that
index.
177
D.1: Document Object Model Level 1 Core
Object NamedNodeMap
The NamedNodeMap object has the following properties:
length
This read-only property is of type Number.
The NamedNodeMap object has the following methods:
getNamedItem(name)
This method returns a Node object.
The name parameter is of type String.
setNamedItem(arg)
This method returns a Node object.
The arg parameter is a Node object.
removeNamedItem(name)
This method returns a Node object.
The name parameter is of type String.
item(index)
This method returns a Node object.
The index parameter is of type Number.
Note: This object can also be dereferenced using square bracket notation (e.g. obj[1]).
Dereferencing with an integer index is equivalent to invoking the item method with that
index.
Object CharacterData
CharacterData has the all the properties and methods of the Node object as well as the properties
and methods defined below.
The CharacterData object has the following properties:
data
This property is of type String.
length
This read-only property is of type Number.
The CharacterData object has the following methods:
substringData(offset, count)
This method returns a String.
The offset parameter is of type Number.
The count parameter is of type Number.
appendData(arg)
This method has no return value.
The arg parameter is of type String.
insertData(offset, arg)
This method has no return value.
The offset parameter is of type Number.
The arg parameter is of type String.
deleteData(offset, count)
This method has no return value.
The offset parameter is of type Number.
The count parameter is of type Number.
replaceData(offset, count, arg)
This method has no return value.
178
D.1: Document Object Model Level 1 Core
179
D.1: Document Object Model Level 1 Core
Text has the all the properties and methods of the CharacterData object as well as the properties
and methods defined below.
The Text object has the following methods:
splitText(offset)
This method returns a Text object.
The offset parameter is of type Number.
Object Comment
Comment has the all the properties and methods of the CharacterData object as well as the
properties and methods defined below.
Object CDATASection
CDATASection has the all the properties and methods of the Text object as well as the properties
and methods defined below.
Object DocumentType
DocumentType has the all the properties and methods of the Node object as well as the properties
and methods defined below.
The DocumentType object has the following properties:
name
This read-only property is of type String.
entities
This read-only property is a NamedNodeMap object.
notations
This read-only property is a NamedNodeMap object.
Object Notation
Notation has the all the properties and methods of the Node object as well as the properties and
methods defined below.
The Notation object has the following properties:
publicId
This read-only property is of type String.
systemId
This read-only property is of type String.
Object Entity
Entity has the all the properties and methods of the Node object as well as the properties and
methods defined below.
The Entity object has the following properties:
publicId
This read-only property is of type String.
systemId
This read-only property is of type String.
notationName
This read-only property is of type String.
Object EntityReference
EntityReference has the all the properties and methods of the Node object as well as the properties
and methods defined below.
Object ProcessingInstruction
ProcessingInstruction has the all the properties and methods of the Node object as well as the
properties and methods defined below.
180
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
181
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
forms
This read-only property is a HTMLCollection object.
anchors
This read-only property is a HTMLCollection object.
cookie
This property is of type String.
The HTMLDocument object has the following methods:
open()
This method has no return value.
close()
This method has no return value.
write(text)
This method has no return value.
The text parameter is of type String.
writeln(text)
This method has no return value.
The text parameter is of type String.
getElementById(elementId)
This method returns a Element object.
The elementId parameter is of type String.
getElementsByName(elementName)
This method returns a NodeList object.
The elementName parameter is of type String.
Object HTMLElement
HTMLElement has the all the properties and methods of the Element object as well as the
properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLElement object has the following properties:
id
This property is of type String.
title
This property is of type String.
lang
This property is of type String.
dir
This property is of type String.
className
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLHtmlElement
HTMLHtmlElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLHtmlElement object has the following properties:
version
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLHeadElement
HTMLHeadElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
182
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
183
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
184
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
length
This read-only property is a long object.
name
This property is of type String.
acceptCharset
This property is of type String.
action
This property is of type String.
enctype
This property is of type String.
method
This property is of type String.
target
This property is of type String.
The HTMLFormElement object has the following methods:
submit()
This method has no return value.
reset()
This method has no return value.
Object HTMLSelectElement
HTMLSelectElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLSelectElement object has the following properties:
type
This read-only property is of type String.
selectedIndex
This property is a long object.
value
This property is of type String.
length
This read-only property is a long object.
form
This read-only property is a HTMLFormElement object.
options
This read-only property is a HTMLCollection object.
disabled
This property is of type Boolean.
multiple
This property is of type Boolean.
name
This property is of type String.
size
This property is a long object.
tabIndex
This property is a long object.
185
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
186
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
defaultChecked
This property is of type Boolean.
form
This read-only property is a HTMLFormElement object.
accept
This property is of type String.
accessKey
This property is of type String.
align
This property is of type String.
alt
This property is of type String.
checked
This property is of type Boolean.
disabled
This property is of type Boolean.
maxLength
This property is a long object.
name
This property is of type String.
readOnly
This property is of type Boolean.
size
This property is of type String.
src
This property is of type String.
tabIndex
This property is a long object.
type
This read-only property is of type String.
useMap
This property is of type String.
value
This property is of type String.
The HTMLInputElement object has the following methods:
blur()
This method has no return value.
focus()
This method has no return value.
select()
This method has no return value.
click()
This method has no return value.
Object HTMLTextAreaElement
HTMLTextAreaElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
187
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
188
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
value
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLLabelElement
HTMLLabelElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLLabelElement object has the following properties:
form
This read-only property is a HTMLFormElement object.
accessKey
This property is of type String.
htmlFor
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLFieldSetElement
HTMLFieldSetElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLFieldSetElement object has the following properties:
form
This read-only property is a HTMLFormElement object.
Object HTMLLegendElement
HTMLLegendElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLLegendElement object has the following properties:
form
This read-only property is a HTMLFormElement object.
accessKey
This property is of type String.
align
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLUListElement
HTMLUListElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLUListElement object has the following properties:
compact
This property is of type Boolean.
type
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLOListElement
HTMLOListElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLOListElement object has the following properties:
compact
This property is of type Boolean.
start
This property is a long object.
type
This property is of type String.
189
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
Object HTMLDListElement
HTMLDListElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLDListElement object has the following properties:
compact
This property is of type Boolean.
Object HTMLDirectoryElement
HTMLDirectoryElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLDirectoryElement object has the following properties:
compact
This property is of type Boolean.
Object HTMLMenuElement
HTMLMenuElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLMenuElement object has the following properties:
compact
This property is of type Boolean.
Object HTMLLIElement
HTMLLIElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLLIElement object has the following properties:
type
This property is of type String.
value
This property is a long object.
Object HTMLDivElement
HTMLDivElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLDivElement object has the following properties:
align
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLParagraphElement
HTMLParagraphElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLParagraphElement object has the following properties:
align
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLHeadingElement
HTMLHeadingElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLHeadingElement object has the following properties:
align
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLQuoteElement
190
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
HTMLQuoteElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLQuoteElement object has the following properties:
cite
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLPreElement
HTMLPreElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLPreElement object has the following properties:
width
This property is a long object.
Object HTMLBRElement
HTMLBRElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLBRElement object has the following properties:
clear
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLBaseFontElement
HTMLBaseFontElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLBaseFontElement object has the following properties:
color
This property is of type String.
face
This property is of type String.
size
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLFontElement
HTMLFontElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLFontElement object has the following properties:
color
This property is of type String.
face
This property is of type String.
size
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLHRElement
HTMLHRElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLHRElement object has the following properties:
align
This property is of type String.
noShade
This property is of type Boolean.
191
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
size
This property is of type String.
width
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLModElement
HTMLModElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLModElement object has the following properties:
cite
This property is of type String.
dateTime
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLAnchorElement
HTMLAnchorElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLAnchorElement object has the following properties:
accessKey
This property is of type String.
charset
This property is of type String.
coords
This property is of type String.
href
This property is of type String.
hreflang
This property is of type String.
name
This property is of type String.
rel
This property is of type String.
rev
This property is of type String.
shape
This property is of type String.
tabIndex
This property is a long object.
target
This property is of type String.
type
This property is of type String.
The HTMLAnchorElement object has the following methods:
blur()
This method has no return value.
focus()
This method has no return value.
192
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
Object HTMLImageElement
HTMLImageElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLImageElement object has the following properties:
lowSrc
This property is of type String.
name
This property is of type String.
align
This property is of type String.
alt
This property is of type String.
border
This property is of type String.
height
This property is of type String.
hspace
This property is of type String.
isMap
This property is of type Boolean.
longDesc
This property is of type String.
src
This property is of type String.
useMap
This property is of type String.
vspace
This property is of type String.
width
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLObjectElement
HTMLObjectElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLObjectElement object has the following properties:
form
This read-only property is a HTMLFormElement object.
code
This property is of type String.
align
This property is of type String.
archive
This property is of type String.
border
This property is of type String.
codeBase
This property is of type String.
193
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
codeType
This property is of type String.
data
This property is of type String.
declare
This property is of type Boolean.
height
This property is of type String.
hspace
This property is of type String.
name
This property is of type String.
standby
This property is of type String.
tabIndex
This property is a long object.
type
This property is of type String.
useMap
This property is of type String.
vspace
This property is of type String.
width
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLParamElement
HTMLParamElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLParamElement object has the following properties:
name
This property is of type String.
type
This property is of type String.
value
This property is of type String.
valueType
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLAppletElement
HTMLAppletElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLAppletElement object has the following properties:
align
This property is of type String.
alt
This property is of type String.
archive
This property is of type String.
194
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
code
This property is of type String.
codeBase
This property is of type String.
height
This property is of type String.
hspace
This property is of type String.
name
This property is of type String.
object
This property is of type String.
vspace
This property is of type String.
width
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLMapElement
HTMLMapElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLMapElement object has the following properties:
areas
This read-only property is a HTMLCollection object.
name
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLAreaElement
HTMLAreaElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLAreaElement object has the following properties:
accessKey
This property is of type String.
alt
This property is of type String.
coords
This property is of type String.
href
This property is of type String.
noHref
This property is of type Boolean.
shape
This property is of type String.
tabIndex
This property is a long object.
target
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLScriptElement
195
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
HTMLScriptElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLScriptElement object has the following properties:
text
This property is of type String.
htmlFor
This property is of type String.
event
This property is of type String.
charset
This property is of type String.
defer
This property is of type Boolean.
src
This property is of type String.
type
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLTableElement
HTMLTableElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well as
the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLTableElement object has the following properties:
caption
This property is a HTMLTableCaptionElement object.
tHead
This property is a HTMLTableSectionElement object.
tFoot
This property is a HTMLTableSectionElement object.
rows
This read-only property is a HTMLCollection object.
tBodies
This read-only property is a HTMLCollection object.
align
This property is of type String.
bgColor
This property is of type String.
border
This property is of type String.
cellPadding
This property is of type String.
cellSpacing
This property is of type String.
frame
This property is of type String.
rules
This property is of type String.
196
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
summary
This property is of type String.
width
This property is of type String.
The HTMLTableElement object has the following methods:
createTHead()
This method returns a HTMLElement object.
deleteTHead()
This method has no return value.
createTFoot()
This method returns a HTMLElement object.
deleteTFoot()
This method has no return value.
createCaption()
This method returns a HTMLElement object.
deleteCaption()
This method has no return value.
insertRow(index)
This method returns a HTMLElement object.
The index parameter is a long object.
deleteRow(index)
This method has no return value.
The index parameter is a long object.
Object HTMLTableCaptionElement
HTMLTableCaptionElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object
as well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLTableCaptionElement object has the following properties:
align
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLTableColElement
HTMLTableColElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLTableColElement object has the following properties:
align
This property is of type String.
ch
This property is of type String.
chOff
This property is of type String.
span
This property is a long object.
vAlign
This property is of type String.
width
This property is of type String.
197
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
Object HTMLTableSectionElement
HTMLTableSectionElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLTableSectionElement object has the following properties:
align
This property is of type String.
ch
This property is of type String.
chOff
This property is of type String.
vAlign
This property is of type String.
rows
This read-only property is a HTMLCollection object.
The HTMLTableSectionElement object has the following methods:
insertRow(index)
This method returns a HTMLElement object.
The index parameter is a long object.
deleteRow(index)
This method has no return value.
The index parameter is a long object.
Object HTMLTableRowElement
HTMLTableRowElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLTableRowElement object has the following properties:
rowIndex
This read-only property is a long object.
sectionRowIndex
This read-only property is a long object.
cells
This read-only property is a HTMLCollection object.
align
This property is of type String.
bgColor
This property is of type String.
ch
This property is of type String.
chOff
This property is of type String.
vAlign
This property is of type String.
The HTMLTableRowElement object has the following methods:
insertCell(index)
This method returns a HTMLElement object.
The index parameter is a long object.
198
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
deleteCell(index)
This method has no return value.
The index parameter is a long object.
Object HTMLTableCellElement
HTMLTableCellElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLTableCellElement object has the following properties:
cellIndex
This read-only property is a long object.
abbr
This property is of type String.
align
This property is of type String.
axis
This property is of type String.
bgColor
This property is of type String.
ch
This property is of type String.
chOff
This property is of type String.
colSpan
This property is a long object.
headers
This property is of type String.
height
This property is of type String.
noWrap
This property is of type Boolean.
rowSpan
This property is a long object.
scope
This property is of type String.
vAlign
This property is of type String.
width
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLFrameSetElement
HTMLFrameSetElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as
well as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLFrameSetElement object has the following properties:
cols
This property is of type String.
rows
This property is of type String.
199
D.2: Document Object Model Level 1 HTML
Object HTMLFrameElement
HTMLFrameElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLFrameElement object has the following properties:
frameBorder
This property is of type String.
longDesc
This property is of type String.
marginHeight
This property is of type String.
marginWidth
This property is of type String.
name
This property is of type String.
noResize
This property is of type Boolean.
scrolling
This property is of type String.
src
This property is of type String.
Object HTMLIFrameElement
HTMLIFrameElement has the all the properties and methods of the HTMLElement object as well
as the properties and methods defined below.
The HTMLIFrameElement object has the following properties:
align
This property is of type String.
frameBorder
This property is of type String.
height
This property is of type String.
longDesc
This property is of type String.
marginHeight
This property is of type String.
marginWidth
This property is of type String.
name
This property is of type String.
scrolling
This property is of type String.
src
This property is of type String.
width
This property is of type String.
200
References
References
For the latest version of any W3C specification please consult the list of W3C Technical Reports available
at http://www.w3.org/TR.
201
G.2: Informative references
Infoset
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XML Information Set, December 1999. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset
JavaIDL
Sun Microsystems Inc. Java IDL. Available at http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/idl
JavaScript
Netscape Communications Corporation JavaScript Resources. Available at
http://developer.netscape.com/one/javascript/resources.html
MIDL
Microsoft Corporation MIDL Language Reference. Available at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/midl/mi-laref_1r1h.htm
XHTML10
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XHTML 1.0: Extensible HyperText Markup Language, A
Reformulation of HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xhtml1-20000126
XPointer
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) XML Pointer Language (XPointer), June 2000. Available at
http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr
202
Objects Index
Objects Index
Document Object Model Core
Attr, 42 CDATASection, 48 CharacterData, 38
Comment, 48 DOMException, 20 DOMImplementation, 22
DOMString, 19 Document, 23 DocumentFragment, 23
DocumentType, 49 Element, 43 Entity, 51
EntityReference, 52 ExceptionCode, 21 NamedNodeMap, 36
Node, 28 NodeList, 35 Notation, 50
ProcessingInstruction, 52 Text, 47
203
Document Object Model HTML
204
Index
Index
16-bit unit 19, 20, 38, 39, 40, 39, 40, 47,
125
background bgColor 64, 92, 98, 100 blur 68, 72, 74, 84
body border 84, 86, 92
205
Index
206
Index
id IDL images
implementation implementor index
INDEX_SIZE_ERR information item 47, 127 Infoset 11, 13, 127, 202
inheritance initial structure model insertBefore
insertCell insertData insertRow 94, 97
interface INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
isMap ISO/IEC 10646 19, 125, 201 item 35, 37, 55
207
Index
model multiple
name 42, 50, 63, 66, 67, 71, 74, 75, 83,
namedItem NamedNodeMap
85, 87, 87, 89, 89, 101, 103
nextSibling NO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERR NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
Node NodeList nodeName
nodeType nodeValue noHref
noResize normalize noShade
NOT_FOUND_ERR NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR Notation
NOTATION_NODE notationName notations
noWrap
208
Index
tabIndex 67, 72, 74, 75, 83, 87, 90 tag valid document tagName
target 52, 62, 63, 66, 83, 90 tBodies Text 47, 62, 65, 70, 91
TEXT_NODE tFoot tHead
type 62, 64, 67, 72, 74, 75, 77,
title 57, 60 type valid document
77, 78, 83, 87, 87, 91
209
Index
210
Production Notes (Non-Normative)
The DOM specification serves as a good example of the power of using XML: all of the HTML
documents, Java bindings, OMG IDL bindings, and ECMA Script bindings are generated from a single set
of XML source files. This section outlines how this specification is written in XML, and how the various
derived works are created.
The DTD module for interfaces specifications is a very loose translation of the Extended Backus-Naur
Form (EBNF) specification of the OMG IDL syntax into XML DTD syntax. In addition to the translation,
the ability to describe the interfaces was added, thereby creating a limited form of literate programming
for interface definitions.
While the DTD module is sufficient for the purposes of the DOM WG, it is very loosely typed, meaning
that there are very few constraints placed on the type specifications (the type information is effectively
treated as an opaque string). In a DTD for object to object communication, some stricter enforcement of
data types would probably be beneficial.
The tool currently used for conversion is COST by Joe English. COST takes the ESIS output of nsgmls,
creates an internal representation, and then allows scripts, and event handlers to be run over the internal
data structure. Event handlers allow document patterns and associated processing to be specified: when
the pattern is matched during a pre-order traversal of a document subtree, the associated action is
executed. This is the heart of the conversion process. Scripts are used to tie the various components
together. For example, each of the major derived data sources (Java code etc.) is created by the execution
of a script, which in turn executes one or more event handlers. The scripts and event handlers are specified
using TCL.
The current version of COST has been somewhat modified from the publicly available version. In
particular, it now runs correctly under 32-bit Windows, uses TCL 8.0, and correctly handles the case
sensitivity of XML (though it probably could not correctly handle native language markup).
211
C. Object Definitions
We could also have used Jade, by James Clark. Like COST, Jade allows patterns and actions to be
specified, but Jade is based on DSSSL, an international standard, whereas COST is not. Jade is more
powerful than COST in many ways, but prior experience of the editor with Cost made it easier to use this
rather than Jade. A future version or Level of the DOM specification may be produced using Jade or an
XSL processor.
Note: The DOM Level 1 Specification Second Edition has been produced using a DOM Level 2
implementation and an XPath implementation in Java.
C. Object Definitions
As stated earlier, all object definitions are specified in XML. The Java bindings, OMG IDL bindings, and
ECMA Script bindings are all generated automatically from the XML source code.
This is possible because the information specified in XML is a superset of what these other syntax need.
This is a general observation, and the same kind of technique can be applied to many other areas: given
rich structure, rich processing and conversion are possible. For Java and OMG IDL, it is basically just a
matter of renaming syntactic keywords; for ECMA Script, the process is somewhat more involved.
As can easily be seen, this is quite verbose, but not unlike OMG IDL. In fact, when the specification was
originally converted to use XML, the OMG IDL definitions were automatically converted into the
corresponding XML source using common Unix text manipulation tools.
212