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Welcome to the XMLDOM Quick Reference guide. This is a valuable 239 page
reference detailing all the interfaces deemed by W3C to be basic to any implementation of
the DOM (including HTML), as well as XML-specific interfaces and Microsoft's own, further
extensions to the Document Object Model. Each object is fully described with working
examples that clearly illustrate how its properties and methods (and in the case of
Microsoft's extension, event handlers) can be used to manipulate actual XML documents.
For an introduction to XML, please read the tutorial:
A Beginners Guide to Creating and Displaying Your First XML Document.
XML was developed by the W3C between 1996 and 1998 to provide
a universal format for describing structured documents and data; in other words, it allows
data to be self-describing. It is basically a simplified subset of the Standard
Generalized Markup Language. SGML was designed back in 1986 as a
metalanguage to describe other languages, and XML was to enable generic SGML to be processed
on the web in much the same way as is currently the case with HTML.
XML describes a class of data objects called XML documents and the XMLDOM provides you,
the programmer, with the means to manipulate them through code, either on web pages or in
applications. The nesting of tags creates a tree-like structure which means that the
handling of these documents is greatly simplified, as the examples in this Quick Reference
clearly demonstrate.
One of XML's great advantages is that it allows the creation of a markup language from
scratch, meaning that different industries and professions can develop custom languages that
accurately handle their industry-specific data. This is well reflected in the recent
proliferation of new markups ending in 'ML' such as Wireless Markup
Language, Chemical Markup Language, Speech Synthesis
Markup Language, Gene Expression Markup Language,
and the not-to-be-taken-seriously Mind Reading Markup Language.
In the past two years since XML's completion, it has been adopted across the board with
great enthusiasm in the anticipation that it will herald the dawn of a new era in information
and document exchange over the internet (in fact, the next version of HTML is expected to be
an XML application). Its advocates are confident that XML will provide greater flexibility
in transfering data between different applications on different platforms and machines, and
greatly increase the accuracy of web searches. Add to that the fact that its reliance on
Unicode makes it international and this enthusiasm is easy to understand.
The DOM Structure Model
Level 1 of the Document Object Model (Core) represents documents as a hierarchy of Node
objects. (This applies to HTML as well as XML documents.) Some of these Node objects may have
child nodes of various types, while others are 'leaf' nodes which can have nothing below
them. These Node objects and any child nodes they may have are listed below.
- Attr
Text, EntityReference
- CDATASection
No Children
- Comment
No Children
- Document
Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, DocumentType
- DocumentFragment
Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference
- DocumentType
No Children
- Element
Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference
- Entity
Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference
- EntityReference
Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection,
EntityReference
- Notation
No Children
- ProcessingInstruction
No Children
- Text
No Children
Fundamental Interfaces
The following interfaces are considered fundamental and, as such, must be included in any
conforming implementation of the DOM, including HTML implementations.
Extended Interfaces
The following interfaces, while forming part of the DOM Level 1 Core specification, are
not required by a purely HTML implementation of the DOM, as there are no objects to expose
them, but they do form part of an XML implementation.
Microsoft Interfaces
The following interfaces are Microsoft extensions to the W3C DOM.
Copyright 1999-2001 by Infinite Software Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.
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