XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Chapter 25. DOM Reference

Tip

This reference section documents the W3C Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Recommendation dated 07 April 2004. The latest version of this recommendation, along with any errata that have been reported, is available on the W3C DOM Activity’s web site (http://www.w3.org/DOM/DOMTR). The symbols (2) and (3) will be used throughout this chapter to indicate in which DOM level a feature became available.

The Document Object Model (DOM) is a language- and platform-independent object framework for manipulating structured documents (see Chapter 19 for additional information). Just as XML is a generic specification for creating markup languages, the DOM Core defines a generic library for manipulating markup-based documents. The W3C DOM is actually a family of related recommendations that provide functionality for many types of document manipulation, including event handling, styling, traversing trees, manipulating HTML documents, and so forth. But most of these recommendations are built on the basic functionality provided by the Core DOM.

The DOM presents a programmer with a document stored as a hierarchy of Node objects. The Node interface is the base interface for every member of a DOM document tree. It exposes attributes common to every type of document object and provides a few simple methods to retrieve type-specific information without resorting to downcasting. This interface also exposes all methods used to query, insert, and remove objects from ...