This package defines the Java binding to the core and XML modules of the DOM API defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). DOM stands for Document Object Model, and the DOM API defines a way to represent an XML document as a tree of nodes. Java 1.4 supports the Level 2 DOM, and Java 5.0 adds support for Level 3.

This package includes methods that allow document trees to be traversed, examined, modified, and built from scratch. Node is the central interface of the package. All nodes in a document tree implement this interface, and it defines the basic methods for traversing and modifying the tree of nodes. Most of the other interfaces in the package are extensions of Node that represent specific types of XML content. The most important and commonly used of these subinterfaces are Document, Element, and Text. A Document object serves as the root of the document tree and defines methods for searching the tree for elements with a specified tag name or ID attribute. The Element interface represents an XML element or tag and has methods for manipulating the element's attributes. The Text interface represents a run of plain text within an Element and has methods for querying or altering that text. NodeList and DOMImplementation do not extend Node but are also important interfaces.

This package is an endorsed standard, which means that it is defined outside of Sun Microsystems and the Java Community Process but has been adopted as part of the Java platform. Full documentation is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/. Note that Java 5.0 also adopts the bootstrap, events, and ls (load/save) subpackages. Those subpackages are not documented in this book because they are only tangentially used by the rest of the Java platform.

Interfaces

public interface Attr extends Node;
public interface CDATASection extends Text;
public interface CharacterData extends Node;
public interface Comment extends CharacterData;
public interface Document extends Node;
public interface DocumentFragment extends Node;
public interface DocumentType extends Node;
public interface DOMConfiguration;
public interface DOMError;
public interface DOMErrorHandler;
public interface DOMImplementation;
public interface DOMImplementationList;
public interface DOMImplementationSource;
public interface DOMLocator;
public interface DOMStringList;
public interface Element extends Node;
public interface Entity extends Node;
public interface EntityReference extends Node;
public interface NamedNodeMap;
public interface NameList;
public interface Node;
public interface NodeList;
public interface Notation extends Node;
public interface ProcessingInstruction extends Node;
public interface Text extends CharacterData;
public interface TypeInfo;
public interface UserDataHandler;

Exceptions

public class DOMException extends RuntimeException;