01 /*
02 * DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER.
03 *
04 * This code is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
05 * under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only, as
06 * published by the Free Software Foundation. Sun designates this
07 * particular file as subject to the "Classpath" exception as provided
08 * by Sun in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code.
09 *
10 * This code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
11 * ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
12 * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
13 * version 2 for more details (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that
14 * accompanied this code).
15 *
16 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License version
17 * 2 along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
18 * Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
19 *
20 * Please contact Sun Microsystems, Inc., 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara,
21 * CA 95054 USA or visit www.sun.com if you need additional information or
22 * have any questions.
23 */
24
25 /*
26 * This file is available under and governed by the GNU General Public
27 * License version 2 only, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
28 * However, the following notice accompanied the original version of this
29 * file and, per its terms, should not be removed:
30 *
31 * Copyright (c) 2004 World Wide Web Consortium,
32 *
33 * (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for
34 * Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. This
35 * work is distributed under the W3C(r) Software License [1] in the hope that
36 * it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
37 * warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
38 *
39 * [1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231
40 */
41
42 package org.w3c.dom;
43
44 /**
45 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> is a "lightweight" or "minimal"
46 * <code>Document</code> object. It is very common to want to be able to
47 * extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of a
48 * document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or rearranging a
49 * document by moving fragments around. It is desirable to have an object
50 * which can hold such fragments and it is quite natural to use a Node for
51 * this purpose. While it is true that a <code>Document</code> object could
52 * fulfill this role, a <code>Document</code> object can potentially be a
53 * heavyweight object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is
54 * really needed for this is a very lightweight object.
55 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> is such an object.
56 * <p>Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children
57 * of another <code>Node</code> -- may take <code>DocumentFragment</code>
58 * objects as arguments; this results in all the child nodes of the
59 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> being moved to the child list of this node.
60 * <p>The children of a <code>DocumentFragment</code> node are zero or more
61 * nodes representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of
62 * the document. <code>DocumentFragment</code> nodes do not need to be
63 * well-formed XML documents (although they do need to follow the rules
64 * imposed upon well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top
65 * nodes). For example, a <code>DocumentFragment</code> might have only one
66 * child and that child node could be a <code>Text</code> node. Such a
67 * structure model represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML
68 * document.
69 * <p>When a <code>DocumentFragment</code> is inserted into a
70 * <code>Document</code> (or indeed any other <code>Node</code> that may
71 * take children) the children of the <code>DocumentFragment</code> and not
72 * the <code>DocumentFragment</code> itself are inserted into the
73 * <code>Node</code>. This makes the <code>DocumentFragment</code> very
74 * useful when the user wishes to create nodes that are siblings; the
75 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> acts as the parent of these nodes so that
76 * the user can use the standard methods from the <code>Node</code>
77 * interface, such as <code>Node.insertBefore</code> and
78 * <code>Node.appendChild</code>.
79 * <p>See also the <a href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-Core-20040407'>Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification</a>.
80 */
81 public interface DocumentFragment extends Node {
82 }
|