By far the vast majority of objects (apart from text) that authors encounter when traversing a document are Element nodes. Assume the following XML document:

<elementexample id="demo">
    <subelement1/>
      <subelement2>
        <subsubelement/>
    </subelement2>
</elementexample>

When represented using DOM, the top node is a Document node containing an Element node for "elementExample" which contains two child Element nodes, one for "subelement1" and one for "subelement2". "subelement1" contains no child nodes. Elements may have attributes associated with them; since the Element interface inherits from Node, 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 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.

Instance Methods

GetAttribute( String name )

Retrieves the attribute value by name.

GetAttributeNode( String arg1 )

Retrieves an attribute node by name.

GetAttributeNodeNS( String namespaceURI, String localName )

Retrieves a DOMAttr node by local name and namespace URI.

GetAttributeNS( String namespaceURI, String localName )

Retrieves an attribute value by local name and namespace URI.

GetElementsByTagName( String name )

Returns the list of descendant elements with the given name.

GetElementsByTagNameNS( String namespaceURI, String localName )

Returns a DOMNodeList of all the DOMElement with a given local name and namespace URI.

GetTagName( )

The name of the element.

HasAttribute( String attrName )

Determines if this element has the attribute specified by attrName

HasAttributeNS( String namespaceURI, String localName )

Determines if this element has the attribute specified by namespaceURI and localName

Normalize( )

Merges adjacent text nodes.

RemoveAttribute( String name )

Removes the specified attribute node.

RemoveAttributeNode( DOMAttr oldAttr )

Removes the attribute specified by the local name and namespace URI.

RemoveAttributeNS( String namespaceURI, String localName )

Adds a new attribute or alters an existing one.

SetAttribute( String name, String value )

Adds a new attribute node.

SetAttributeNode( DOMAttr newAttr )

Adds a new attribute.

SetAttributeNodeNS( DOMAttr newAttr )

Adds a new attribute.

SetAttributeNS( String namespaceURI, String qualifiedName, String value )

Instance Methods

GetAttribute

String GetAttribute( String name )

Retrieves the attribute value by name.

Parameters

name

The name of the attribute to retrieve

Returns:

The value of the attribute.

GetAttributeNode

DOMAttr GetAttributeNode( String arg1 )

Retrieves an attribute node by name.

Parameters

arg1

Name of the attribute to retrieve.

Returns:

The DOMAttr node with the specified name (nodeName) or null if there is no such attribute.

GetAttributeNodeNS

DOMAttr GetAttributeNodeNS( String namespaceURI,
String localName )

Retrieves a DOMAttr node by local name and namespace URI.

Parameters

namespaceURI

Name of the attribute to retrieve.

localName

Name of the attribute to retrieve.

Returns:

The DOMAttr node with the specified namespaceURI and localName or null if there is no such attribute.

GetAttributeNS

String GetAttributeNS( String namespaceURI,
String localName )

Retrieves an attribute value by local name and namespace URI.

Parameters

namespaceURI

The namespace URI of the attribute to retrieve.

localName

The local name of the attribute to retrieve.

Returns:

The attribute value spedified by local name and namespace URI.

GetElementsByTagName

DOMNodeList GetElementsByTagName( String name )

Returns a NodeList 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.

Parameters

name

The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags.

Returns:

A list of matching Element nodes.

GetElementsByTagNameNS

DOMNodeList GetElementsByTagNameNS( String namespaceURI,
String localName )

Returns a DOMNodeList of all the DOMElement with a given local name and namespace URI in the order in which they would be encountered in a preorder traversal of the DOMDocument tree, starting from this node.

Parameters

namespaceURI

The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all namespaces.

localName

The local name of the elements to match on. The special value "*" matches all local names.

Returns:

A DOMNodeList of all the DOMElement with a given local name and namespace URI

GetTagName

String GetTagName()

The name of the element.

Returns:

The name of the element.

HasAttribute

Boolean HasAttribute( String attrName )

Determines if this element contains the attribute specified by attrName.

Parameters

attrName

The name of the attribute to look for.

Returns:

TRUE if attrName exists, FALSE otherwise

HasAttributeNS

Boolean HasAttributeNS( String namespaceURI,
String localName )

Determines if this element contains the attribute specified by namespaceURI and localName

Parameters

namespaceURI

The namespace URI of the attribute to look for.

localName

The local name of the attribute to look for.

Returns:

TRUE if the attribute exists, FALSE otherwise

Normalize

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 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 lookups) that depend on a particular document tree structure are to be used.

Note: In cases where the document contains CDATASections, the normalize operation alone may not be sufficient, since XPointers do not differentiate between Text nodes and CDATASection nodes.

Returns:

RemoveAttribute

Void RemoveAttribute( String name )

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

Name of the attribute to remove.

Returns:

RemoveAttributeNode

DOMAttr RemoveAttributeNode( DOMAttr oldAttr )

Removes the specified attribute node. If the removed Attr has a default value it is immediately replaced.

Parameters

oldAttr

The attribute node to remove.

Returns:

The Attr node that was removed.

RemoveAttributeNS

Void RemoveAttributeNS( String namespaceURI,
String localName )

Removes an attribute by local name and namespace URI. If the removed attribute has a default value it is immediately replaced. The replacing attribute has the same namespace URI and local name, as well as the original prefix.

Parameters

namespaceURI

The namespace URI of the attribute to remove.

localName

The local name of the attribute to remove.

Returns:

SetAttribute

Void SetAttribute( String name,
String value )

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 node plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.

Parameters

name

Name of the attribute to create or alter.

value

Value to set in string form.

Returns:

SetAttributeNode

DOMAttr SetAttributeNode( DOMAttr newAttr )

Adds a new attribute node. If an attribute with that name (nodeName) is already present in the element, it is replaced by the new one.

Parameters

newAttr

The attribute node to add.

Returns:

If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute, the replaced Attr node is returned, otherwise undefined is returned.

SetAttributeNodeNS

DOMAttr SetAttributeNodeNS( DOMAttr newAttr )

Adds a new attribute.If an attribute with that local name and namespace URI is already present in the element, it is replaced by the new one..

Parameters

newAttr

The DOMAttr node to add to the attribute list.

Returns:

If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute with the same local name and namespace URI, the replaced DOMAttr node is returned, otherwise undefined is returned.

SetAttributeNS

Void SetAttributeNS( String namespaceURI,
String qualifiedName,
String value )

Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with the same local name and namespace URI is already present on the element, its prefix is changed to be the prefix part of the qualifiedName, and its value is changed to be 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.

Parameters

namespaceURI

The namespace URI of the attribute to create or alter.

qualifiedName

The qualified name of the attribute to create or alter.

value

The value to set in string form.