DevGuru XML DOM CharacterData Object



			OBJECT: CharacterData
			The CharacterData object is not really a DOM object as such, but rather extends the Node object with various properties and methods for manipulating text. These are capable of handling very large amounts of text (amounts beyond the scope of native string functions) and can be implemented by the CDATASection, Comment and Text Nodes. To demonstrate a few of the properties and methods of CharacterData the following code loads the 'currencies.xml' file and displays information about the first 'currency' element using the data and length properties. It then gets a substring of the text using the substringData method and displays that. XML: <currencies> <currency>CHF Swiss Francs</currency> <currency>DEM German Deutsche Marks</currency> <currency>GBP United Kingdom Pounds</currency> <currency>JPY Japanese Yen</currency> <currency>USD United States Dollars</currency> </currencies> Code (VBScript): Set objXMLDoc = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM") objXMLDoc.async = False objXMLDoc.load("currencies.xml") Set Elem = objXMLDoc.documentElement.firstChild Set Text = Elem.firstChild document.write(Text.data) document.write("<br>length: " & Text.length) Substr = Text.substringData(4, 5) document.write("<br>" & Substr) Output: CHF Swiss Francs length: 16 Swiss denotes a Microsoft extension to the W3C DOM. PROPERTIES attributes Property This is a read-only property that returns an NamedNodeMap for nodes that can have attributes. Syntax: Node.attributes baseName Property This is a read-only property that returns the base name for a node. Syntax: Node.baseName childNodes Property This is a read-only property containing a node list of all children for those elements that can have them. Syntax: Node.childNodes data Property This property contains the data for this node, depending on node type. Syntax: CharacterData.data dataType Property This is a read-only property that specifies the data type for the node. Syntax: Node.dataType definition Property This property returns the definition of the node in the DTD or schema. Syntax: Node.definition firstChild Property This is a read-only property that returns the first child node of a node. If there is none, it returns null. Syntax: Node.firstChild lastChild Property This is a read-only property that returns the last child node of a node. If there is none, it returns null. Syntax: Node.lastChild length Property This property is read-only and contains the length of the data string in characters. Syntax: CharacterData.length namespaceURI Property This property is read-only and returns the URI (Universal Resource Indentifier) of the namespace. Syntax: Node.namespaceURI nextSibling Property This property returns the next node in the parent's child list, or null if there is none or the node is of a type that cannot be a child node (Attr, Document, DocumentFragment). Syntax: Node.nextSibling nodeName Property This property is read-only and contains the name of the node, depending on type. Syntax: Node.nodeName nodeType Property This is a read-only property specifying the type of the node. Syntax: Node.nodeType nodeTypedValue Property This property contains the value of this node expressed in its defined data type. Syntax: Node.nodeTypedValue nodeTypeString Property This property is read-only and returns the node type in string form. Syntax: Node.nodeTypeString nodeValue Property This property contains the value of the node, depending on type. Syntax: Node.nodeValue ownerDocument Property This property returns the Document object to which the node belongs. If the node itself is a document, then it returns null. Syntax: Node.ownerDocument parentNode Property This is a read-only property that returns the parent node of all nodes except Document, DocumentFragment and Attr, which cannot have parent nodes. Syntax: Node.parentNode parsed Property This property returns a boolean value of true if this node and all of its descendants have been parsed and instantiated. Otherwise it returns false. Syntax: Node.parsed prefix Property This property is read-only and returns the namespace prefix, or an empty string if none is specified. For example, it would return 'xxx' for the element <xxx:yyy>. Syntax: Node.prefix previousSibling Property This property returns the previous node in the parent's child list, or null if there is none or the node is of a type that cannot be a child node (Attr, Document, DocumentFragment). Syntax: Node.previousSibling specified Property This property returns a boolean value indicating whether this node (usually an attribute) is explicitly specified or derived from a default value in the DTD or schema. Syntax: Node.specified text Property This property contains the text content of this node and its subtrees. Syntax: Node.text xml Property This property contains the XML representation of this node and its descendants. Syntax: Node.xml METHODS appendChild Method This method appends a new child node to the list of children for this node. Syntax: Node.appendChild(tagName) appendData Method This method appends the specified string to existing string data. Syntax: CharacterData.appendData(data) cloneNode Method This method creates a clone node which is an exact replica of this node. Syntax: Node.cloneNode(deep) deleteData Method This method is used to remove the specified range of characters from string data. Syntax: CharacterData.deleteData(offset, count) hasChildNodes Method This method is a convenient way to determine whether a node has child nodes, returning true if it has, and false if not. Syntax: Node.hasChildNodes( ) insertBefore Method This method is used to insert a new child node before an existing one. If no child node exists, the new child node becomes the first. Syntax: Node.insertBefore(newChild, refChild) insertData Method This method is used to insert a string at the specified offset. Syntax: CharacterData.insertData(offset, data) removeChild Method This method removes the specified node from the list of children and returns it. Syntax: Node.removeChild(oldChild) replaceChild Method This method is used to replace one of a node's children with another. It returns the old child. Syntax: Node.replaceChild(newChild, oldChild) replaceData Method This method replaces the characters from the specified offset with the supplied string data. Syntax: CharacterData.replaceData(offset, count, data) selectNodes Method This method creates a NodeList of all the matching descendant nodes returned by the specified pattern-matching operation. Syntax: Node.selectNodes(patternString) selectSingleNode Method This method returns a Node object for the first descendant node to match the specified pattern. Syntax: Node.selectSingleNode(patternString) substringData Method This method returns a substring consisting of the specified range of characters. Syntax: CharacterData.substringData(offset, count) transformNode Method This method processes this node and its descendants using the specified XSL stylesheet, and returns the resulting transformation. Syntax: Node.transformNode(stylesheet) transformNodeToObject Method This method processes this node and its descendants using the specified XSL stylesheet, and returns the resulting transformation in the specified object. Syntax: Node.transformNodeToObject(stylesheet, outputObject)