DocumentFragment

Class Overview

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 insertBefore and appendChild.

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

Summary

[Expand] Inherited Constants

From interface org.w3c.dom.Node short ATTRIBUTE_NODE The node is an Attr. short CDATA_SECTION_NODE The node is a CDATASection. short COMMENT_NODE The node is a Comment. short DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE The node is a DocumentFragment. short DOCUMENT_NODE The node is a Document. short DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE The node is a DocumentType. short ELEMENT_NODE The node is an Element. short ENTITY_NODE The node is an Entity. short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE The node is an EntityReference. short NOTATION_NODE The node is a Notation. short PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE The node is a ProcessingInstruction. short TEXT_NODE The node is a Text node.

[Expand] Inherited Methods

From interface org.w3c.dom.Node abstract Node appendChild(Node newChild) Adds the node newChild to the end of the list of children of this node. abstract Node cloneNode(boolean deep) Returns a duplicate of this node, i.e., serves as a generic copy constructor for nodes. abstract NamedNodeMap getAttributes() A NamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it is an Element) or null otherwise. abstract NodeList getChildNodes() A NodeList that contains all children of this node. abstract Node getFirstChild() The first child of this node. abstract Node getLastChild() The last child of this node. abstract String getLocalName() Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node. abstract String getNamespaceURI() The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified. abstract Node getNextSibling() The node immediately following this node. abstract String getNodeName() The name of this node, depending on its type; see the table above. abstract short getNodeType() A code representing the type of the underlying object, as defined above. abstract String getNodeValue() Returns the value of this node, depending on its type; see the table above. abstract Document getOwnerDocument() The Document object associated with this node. abstract Node getParentNode() The parent of this node. abstract String getPrefix() Returns the namespace prefix of this node, or null if it is unspecified. abstract Node getPreviousSibling() The node immediately preceding this node. abstract boolean hasAttributes() Returns whether this node (if it is an element) has any attributes. abstract boolean hasChildNodes() Returns whether this node has any children. abstract Node insertBefore(Node newChild, Node refChild) Inserts the node newChild before the existing child node refChild. abstract boolean isSupported(String feature, String version) Tests whether the DOM implementation implements a specific feature and that feature is supported by this node. abstract 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. abstract Node removeChild(Node oldChild) Removes the child node indicated by oldChild from the list of children, and returns it. abstract Node replaceChild(Node newChild, Node oldChild) Replaces the child node oldChild with newChild in the list of children, and returns the oldChild node. abstract void setNodeValue(String nodeValue) Sets the value of this node, depending on its type; see the table above. abstract void setPrefix(String prefix) Sets the namespace prefix of this node.