Interface CDATASection

All Superinterfaces:

CharacterData, Node, Text

public interface CDATASection
extends Text

CDATA sections are used to escape blocks of text containing characters that would otherwise be regarded as markup. The only delimiter that is recognized in a CDATA section is the "]]>" string that ends the CDATA section. CDATA sections cannot be nested. Their primary purpose is for including material such as XML fragments, without needing to escape all the delimiters.

The CharacterData.data attribute holds the text that is contained by the CDATA section. Note that this may contain characters that need to be escaped outside of CDATA sections and that, depending on the character encoding ("charset") chosen for serialization, it may be impossible to write out some characters as part of a CDATA section.

The CDATASection interface inherits from the CharacterData interface through the Text interface. Adjacent CDATASection nodes are not merged by use of the normalize method of the Node interface.

No lexical check is done on the content of a CDATA section and it is therefore possible to have the character sequence "]]>" in the content, which is illegal in a CDATA section per section 2.7 of [XML 1.0]. The presence of this character sequence must generate a fatal error during serialization or the cdata section must be split before the serialization (see also the parameter "split-cdata-sections" in the DOMConfiguration interface).

Note: Because no markup is recognized within a CDATASection, character numeric references cannot be used as an escape mechanism when serializing. Therefore, action needs to be taken when serializing a CDATASection with a character encoding where some of the contained characters cannot be represented. Failure to do so would not produce well-formed XML.

Note: One potential solution in the serialization process is to end the CDATA section before the character, output the character using a character reference or entity reference, and open a new CDATA section for any further characters in the text node. Note, however, that some code conversion libraries at the time of writing do not return an error or exception when a character is missing from the encoding, making the task of ensuring that data is not corrupted on serialization more difficult.

See also the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification.

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 CharacterData

appendData, deleteData, getData, getLength, insertData, replaceData, setData, substringData

Modifier and Type	Method	Description
void	appendData(String arg)	Append the string to the end of the character data of the node.
void	deleteData(int offset, int count)	Remove a range of 16-bit units from the node.
String	getData()	The character data of the node that implements this interface.
int	getLength()	The number of 16-bit units that are available through data and the substringData method below.
void	insertData(int offset, String arg)	Insert a string at the specified 16-bit unit offset.
void	replaceData(int offset, int count, String arg)	Replace the characters starting at the specified 16-bit unit offset with the specified string.
void	setData(String data)	The character data of the node that implements this interface.
String	substringData(int offset, int count)	Extracts a range of data from the node.

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.

Methods declared in interface Text

getWholeText, isElementContentWhitespace, replaceWholeText, splitText

Modifier and Type	Method	Description
String	getWholeText()	Returns all text of Text nodes logically-adjacent text nodes to this node, concatenated in document order.
boolean	isElementContentWhitespace()	Returns whether this text node contains element content whitespace, often abusively called "ignorable whitespace".
Text	replaceWholeText(String content)	Replaces the text of the current node and all logically-adjacent text nodes with the specified text.
Text	splitText(int offset)	Breaks this node into two nodes at the specified offset, keeping both in the tree as siblings.