DOMDocument

Article
11/18/2015

A version of this page is also available for

4/8/2010

Represents the top level of the XML source. Includes members for retrieving and creating all other XML objects.

Methods

The following table shows the methods for DOMDocument.

Method	Description
abort*	Aborts an asynchronous download in progress.
appendChild	Appends newChild as the last child of this node.
cloneNode	Creates a new node that is an exact clone of this node.
createAttribute	Creates a new attribute with the specified name.
createCDATASection	Creates a CDATA section node that contains the supplied data.
createComment	Creates a comment node that contains the supplied data.
createDocumentFragment	Creates an empty IXMLDOMDocumentFragment object.
createElement	Creates an element node using the specified name.
createEntityReference	Creates a new IXMLDOMEntityReference object.
createNode*	Creates a node using the supplied type, name, and namespace.
createProcessingInstruction	Creates a processing instruction node that contains the supplied target and data.
createTextNode	Creates a text node that contains the supplied data.
getElementsByTagName	Returns a collection of elements that have the specified name.
hasChildNodes	Returns True if this node has children.
insertBefore	Inserts a child node to the left of the specified node or at the end of the list.
load*	Loads an XML document from the specified location.
loadXML*	Loads an XML document using the supplied string.
nodeFromID*	Returns the node whose identifier attribute matches the supplied value.
removeChild	Removes the specified child node from the list of children and returns it.
replaceChild	Replaces the specified old child node with the supplied new child node in the set of children of this node, and returns the old child node.
save*	Saves an XML document to the specified location.
selectNodes*	Applies the specified pattern-matching operation to this node's context and returns the list of matching nodes.
selectSingleNode*	Applies the specified pattern-matching operation to this node's context and returns the first matching node.
transformNode*	Processes this node and its children using the supplied Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) style sheet and returns the resulting transformation.
transformNodeToObject*	Processes this node and its children using the supplied XSLT style sheet and returns the resulting transformation in the supplied object.

* denotes an extension to the W3C DOM.

Properties

The following table shows the properties for DOMDocument.

Property	Description
async*	Indicates whether asynchronous download is permitted. Read/write.
attributes	Contains the list of attributes for this node. Read-only.
baseName*	Returns the base name for the name qualified with the namespace. Read-only.
childNodes	Contains a node list containing the children (for nodes that can have children). Read-only.
dataType*	Specifies the data type for this node. Read/write.
definition*	Returns the definition of the node in the document type definition (DTD) or schema. Read-only.
doctype	Contains the document type node that specifies the DTD for this document. Read-only.
documentElement	Contains the root element of the document. Read/write.
firstChild	Contains the first child of this node. Read-only.
implementation	Contains the IXMLDOMImplementation object for this document. Read-only.
lastChild	Returns the last child node. Read-only.
namespaceURI*	Returns the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for the namespace. Read-only.
nextSibling	Contains the next sibling of this node in the parent's child list. Read-only.
nodeName	Contains the qualified name of the element, attribute, or entity reference, or a fixed string for other node types. Read-only.
nodeType	Specifies the XML Document Object Model (DOM) node type, which determines valid values and whether the node can have child nodes. Read-only.
nodeTypedValue*	Contains this node's value, expressed in its defined data type. Read/write.
nodeTypeString*	Returns the node type in string form. Read-only.
nodeValue	Contains the text associated with the node. Read/write.
ondataavailable*	Specifies the event handler for the ondataavailable event. Read/write.
onreadystatechange*	Specifies the event handler to be called when the readyState property changes. Read/write.
ontransformnode*	Specifies the event handler for the ontransformnode event. Read/write.
ownerDocument	Returns the root of the document that contains this node. Read-only.
parentNode	Contains the parent node (for nodes that can have parents). Read-only.
parsed*	Contains True if this node and all descendants have been parsed and instantiated; False if any nodes remain to be parsed. Read-only.
parseError*	Returns an IXMLDOMParseError object that contains information about the last parsing error. Read-only.
prefix*	Returns the namespace prefix. Read-only.
preserveWhiteSpace*	Contains True if default processing preserves white space; False otherwise. Read/write.
previousSibling	Contains the left sibling of this node. Read-only.
readyState*	Indicates the current state of the XML document. Read-only.
resolveExternals*	Indicates whether external definitions (resolvable namespaces, DTD external subsets, and external entity references) are to be resolved at parse time, independent of validation. Read/write.
specified*	Indicates whether the node (usually an attribute) is explicitly specified or derived from a default value in the DTD or schema. Read-only.
text*	Contains the text content of the node and its subtrees. Read/write.
url*	Returns the canonicalized URL for the last loaded XML document. Read-only.
validateOnParse*	Indicates whether the parser should validate this document. Read/write.
xml*	Contains the XML representation of the node and all its descendants. Read-only.

* denotes an extension to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) DOM.

Events

The following table shows the events for DOMDocument.

Event	Description
ondataavailable*	Indicates that XML document data is available.
onreadystatechange*	Indicates when the readyState property changes.
ontransformnode*	Fires before each node in the style sheet is applied to each node in the XML source. The ontransformnode event does not fire on DOMDocument for style sheets using the XSLT namespace. It does, however, fire on DOMDocument for style sheets using the XSL namespace.

* denotes an extension to the W3C DOM.

Remarks

DOMDocument represents the top node in the tree. It implements all of the base Document Object Model (DOM) document methods and provides additional members that support Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and XML transformations.

Only one object can be created: the document. All other objects are accessed or created from the document.

The document can be created using a rental-threaded model. The document-threading model is set by the following settings.

Setting	Rental-threaded model
Version independent ProgID	Msxml2.DOMDocument
ProgID	Msxml2.DOMDocument.3.0
ClassID	F6D90F11-9C73-11D3-B32E-00C04F990BB4
VB Class Name	DOMDocument30

In addition to the DOM interfaces, DOMDocument implements a number of standard COM interfaces. You can call the QueryInterface method on DOMDocument to get the following interfaces.

Interface	Usage
IUnknown	DOMDocument is a wrapper object and each query for DOMDocument returns a new wrapper. You should only compare IUnknown interface pointers.
IConnectionPointContainer	Supports outgoing events ondataavailable Event and onreadystatechange Event through IPropertyNotifySink::OnChanged and IDispatch::Invoke.
IDispatch	Interface used by Visual Basic.
IDispatchEx	Interface used by dynamic late-bound scripting languages such as Microsoft® Visual Basic® Scripting Edition (VBScript) and Microsoft JScript® development system. This is not fully implemented. The following methods always return E_NOTIMPL: DeleteMemberByName or DeleteMemberByDispID, GetMemberProperties, GetMemberName, GetNextDispID, and GetNameSpaceParent.
IObjectSafety	When the SetInterfaceSafetyOptions method is called with nonzero safety options, the Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) will apply security rules before fetching XML data.
IObjectWithSite	Enables a host application to provide extra contextual information, such the base URL.
IOleCommandTarget	Used by a COM container to send an OLECMDID_STOP command to stop an asynchronous download.
IPersistMoniker	Provides control over how to bind the XML document to persistent data. Both synchronous and asynchronous loading are supported using BindToStorage on the given IMoniker. Save is not called; therefore the BindToStorage, IsDirty, and SaveCompleted methods return E_NOTIMPL.
IPersistStream	Used to save and load the XML document to and from an IStream.
IPersistStreamInit	Updated version of IPersistStream.
IProvideClassInfo	Provides an easy way to get ITypeInfo for the DOMDocument.
IStream	You can read and write directly to the document through the IStream that is returned. You cannot Seek during a Write operation, and the following methods are not implemented on this stream: SetSize, CopyTo, Commit, Revert, LockRegion, UnlockRegion, and Clone. This allows you to build an XML document efficiently by providing chunks of XML and calling Write on the stream. You can also use this to test the persistence of your current DOM document by calling "xmldoc1.save(xmldoc2)." The Save method uses this IStream interface.

When the object-creation methods, such as createElement, are used on the document, nodes are created in the context of the document, the ow but the node is not part of the document tree. The node is only part of the document tree when it is explicitly added to the tree by calling insertBefore, replaceChild, or appendChild; or for attributes, using setAttributeNode).

This interface inherits from IXMLDOMNode.

Requirements

Header	msxml2.h, msxml2.idl
Windows Embedded CE	Windows CE .NET 4.0 and later
Windows Mobile	Windows Mobile Version 5.0 and later

DOMDocument

Methods

Properties

Events

Remarks

Requirements

See Also

Reference

Concepts

Additional resources