Interface DocumentFragment

All Superinterfaces:: Node

public interface DocumentFragment extends Node

DocumentFragment is a "lightweight" or "minimal" Document object. It is very common to want to be able to extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of a document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or rearranging a document by moving fragments around. It is desirable to have an object which can hold such fragments and it is quite natural to use a Node for this purpose. While it is true that a Document object could fulfill this role, a Document object can potentially be a heavyweight object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is really needed for this is a very lightweight object. DocumentFragment is such an object.

Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children of another Node -- 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 node. Such a structure model represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML document.

When a DocumentFragment is inserted into a Document (or indeed any other Node 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 Node.insertBefore and Node.appendChild.

Since:: 1.4, DOM Level 2

Field Summary

Fields declared in interface Node

ATTRIBUTE_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINED_BY, DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINS, DOCUMENT_POSITION_DISCONNECTED, DOCUMENT_POSITION_FOLLOWING, DOCUMENT_POSITION_IMPLEMENTATION_SPECIFIC, DOCUMENT_POSITION_PRECEDING, DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE, ELEMENT_NODE, ENTITY_NODE, ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE, NOTATION_NODE, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE, TEXT_NODE

Modifier and Type	Field	Description
`static final short`	`ATTRIBUTE_NODE`	The node is an `Attr`.
`static final short`	`CDATA_SECTION_NODE`	The node is a `CDATASection`.
`static final short`	`COMMENT_NODE`	The node is a `Comment`.
`static final short`	`DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE`	The node is a `DocumentFragment`.
`static final short`	`DOCUMENT_NODE`	The node is a `Document`.
`static final short`	`DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINED_BY`	The node is contained by the reference node.
`static final short`	`DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINS`	The node contains the reference node.
`static final short`	`DOCUMENT_POSITION_DISCONNECTED`	The two nodes are disconnected.
`static final short`	`DOCUMENT_POSITION_FOLLOWING`	The node follows the reference node.
`static final short`	`DOCUMENT_POSITION_IMPLEMENTATION_SPECIFIC`	The determination of preceding versus following is implementation-specific.
`static final short`	`DOCUMENT_POSITION_PRECEDING`	The second node precedes the reference node.
`static final short`	`DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE`	The node is a `DocumentType`.
`static final short`	`ELEMENT_NODE`	The node is an `Element`.
`static final short`	`ENTITY_NODE`	The node is an `Entity`.
`static final short`	`ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE`	The node is an `EntityReference`.
`static final short`	`NOTATION_NODE`	The node is a `Notation`.
`static final short`	`PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE`	The node is a `ProcessingInstruction`.
`static final short`	`TEXT_NODE`	The node is a `Text` node.

Method Summary

Methods declared in interface Node

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

Modifier and Type	Method	Description
`Node`	`appendChild(Node newChild)`	Adds the node `newChild` to the end of the list of children of this node.
`Node`	`cloneNode(boolean deep)`	Returns a duplicate of this node, i.e., serves as a generic copy constructor for nodes.
`short`	`compareDocumentPosition(Node other)`	Compares the reference node, i.e. the node on which this method is being called, with a node, i.e. the one passed as a parameter, with regard to their position in the document and according to the document order.
`NamedNodeMap`	`getAttributes()`	A `NamedNodeMap` containing the attributes of this node (if it is an `Element`) or `null` otherwise.
`String`	`getBaseURI()`	The absolute base URI of this node or `null` if the implementation wasn't able to obtain an absolute URI.
`NodeList`	`getChildNodes()`	A `NodeList` that contains all children of this node.
`Object`	`getFeature(String feature, String version)`	This method returns a specialized object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, as specified in .
`Node`	`getFirstChild()`	The first child of this node.
`Node`	`getLastChild()`	The last child of this node.
`String`	`getLocalName()`	Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node.
`String`	`getNamespaceURI()`	The namespace URI of this node, or `null` if it is unspecified (see ).
`Node`	`getNextSibling()`	The node immediately following this node.
`String`	`getNodeName()`	The name of this node, depending on its type; see the table above.
`short`	`getNodeType()`	A code representing the type of the underlying object, as defined above.
`String`	`getNodeValue()`	The value of this node, depending on its type; see the table above.
`Document`	`getOwnerDocument()`	The `Document` object associated with this node.
`Node`	`getParentNode()`	The parent of this node.
`String`	`getPrefix()`	The namespace prefix of this node, or `null` if it is unspecified.
`Node`	`getPreviousSibling()`	The node immediately preceding this node.
`String`	`getTextContent()`	This attribute returns the text content of this node and its descendants.
`Object`	`getUserData(String key)`	Retrieves the object associated to a key on a this node.
`boolean`	`hasAttributes()`	Returns whether this node (if it is an element) has any attributes.
`boolean`	`hasChildNodes()`	Returns whether this node has any children.
`Node`	`insertBefore(Node newChild, Node refChild)`	Inserts the node `newChild` before the existing child node `refChild`.
`boolean`	`isDefaultNamespace(String namespaceURI)`	This method checks if the specified `namespaceURI` is the default namespace or not.
`boolean`	`isEqualNode(Node arg)`	Tests whether two nodes are equal.
`boolean`	`isSameNode(Node other)`	Returns whether this node is the same node as the given one.
`boolean`	`isSupported(String feature, String version)`	Tests whether the DOM implementation implements a specific feature and that feature is supported by this node, as specified in .
`String`	`lookupNamespaceURI(String prefix)`	Look up the namespace URI associated to the given prefix, starting from this node.
`String`	`lookupPrefix(String namespaceURI)`	Look up the prefix associated to the given namespace URI, starting from this node.
`void`	`normalize()`	Puts all `Text` nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree underneath this `Node`, including attribute nodes, into a "normal" form where only structure (e.g., elements, comments, processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity references) separates `Text` nodes, i.e., there are neither adjacent `Text` nodes nor empty `Text` nodes.
`Node`	`removeChild(Node oldChild)`	Removes the child node indicated by `oldChild` from the list of children, and returns it.
`Node`	`replaceChild(Node newChild, Node oldChild)`	Replaces the child node `oldChild` with `newChild` in the list of children, and returns the `oldChild` node.
`void`	`setNodeValue(String nodeValue)`	The value of this node, depending on its type; see the table above.
`void`	`setPrefix(String prefix)`	The namespace prefix of this node, or `null` if it is unspecified.
`void`	`setTextContent(String textContent)`	This attribute returns the text content of this node and its descendants.
`Object`	`setUserData(String key, Object data, UserDataHandler handler)`	Associate an object to a key on this node.

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