001/* 002 * Copyright (c) 2000 World Wide Web Consortium, 003 * (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institut National de 004 * Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Keio University). All 005 * Rights Reserved. This program is distributed under the W3C's Software 006 * Intellectual Property License. This program is distributed in the 007 * hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even 008 * the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR 009 * PURPOSE. 010 * See W3C License http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ for more details. 011 */ 012 013package org.w3c.dom; 014 015/** 016 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> is a "lightweight" or "minimal" 017 * <code>Document</code> object. It is very common to want to be able to 018 * extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of a 019 * document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or rearranging a 020 * document by moving fragments around. It is desirable to have an object 021 * which can hold such fragments and it is quite natural to use a Node for 022 * this purpose. While it is true that a <code>Document</code> object could 023 * fulfill this role, a <code>Document</code> object can potentially be a 024 * heavyweight object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is 025 * really needed for this is a very lightweight object. 026 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> is such an object. 027 * <p>Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children 028 * of another <code>Node</code> -- may take <code>DocumentFragment</code> 029 * objects as arguments; this results in all the child nodes of the 030 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> being moved to the child list of this node. 031 * <p>The children of a <code>DocumentFragment</code> node are zero or more 032 * nodes representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of 033 * the document. <code>DocumentFragment</code> nodes do not need to be 034 * well-formed XML documents (although they do need to follow the rules 035 * imposed upon well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top 036 * nodes). For example, a <code>DocumentFragment</code> might have only one 037 * child and that child node could be a <code>Text</code> node. Such a 038 * structure model represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML 039 * document. 040 * <p>When a <code>DocumentFragment</code> is inserted into a 041 * <code>Document</code> (or indeed any other <code>Node</code> that may 042 * take children) the children of the <code>DocumentFragment</code> and not 043 * the <code>DocumentFragment</code> itself are inserted into the 044 * <code>Node</code>. This makes the <code>DocumentFragment</code> very 045 * useful when the user wishes to create nodes that are siblings; the 046 * <code>DocumentFragment</code> acts as the parent of these nodes so that 047 * the user can use the standard methods from the <code>Node</code> 048 * interface, such as <code>insertBefore</code> and <code>appendChild</code>. 049 * <p>See also the <a href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Core-20001113'>Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Specification</a>. 050 */ 051public interface DocumentFragment extends Node { 052}