XML DOM » Objects » 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.
Examples
Code:
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>
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
Language(s): VBScript XML
Properties
- attributes
Syntax: node.attributes
This is a read-only property that returns a NamedNodeMap for nodes that can have attributes.
- baseName
Syntax: document.basename
This is a read-only property that returns the base name for a node.
- childNodes
Syntax: node.childNodes
This is a read-only property containing a node list of all children for those elements that can have them.
- data
Syntax: characterData.data
This property contains the data for this node, depending on node type.
- dataType
Syntax: node.dataType
This is a read-only property that specifies the data type for the node.
- definition
Syntax: node.definition
This property returns the definition of the node in the DTD or schema.
- firstChild
Syntax: node.firstChild
This is a read-only property that returns the first child node of a node. If there is none, it returns null.
- lastChild
Syntax: node.lastChild
This is a read-only property that returns the last child node of a node. If there is none, it returns null.
- length
Syntax: characterData.length
This property is read-only and contains the length of the data string in characters.
- namespaceURI
Syntax: object.namespaceURI
This property is read-only and returns the URI (Universal Resource Indentifier) of the namespace.
- nextSibling
Syntax: node.nextSibling
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).
- nodeName
Syntax: node.nodeName
This property is read-only and contains the name of the node, depending on type.
- nodeType
Syntax: node.nodeType
This property is read-only and contains the name of the node, depending on type.
- nodeTypedValue
Syntax: node.nodeTypedValue
This property contains the value of this node expressed in its defined data type.
- nodeTypeString
Syntax: node.nodeTypeString
This property is read-only and returns the node type in string form.
- nodeValue
Syntax: node.nodeValue
This property contains the value of the node, depending on type.
- ownerDocument
Syntax: node.ownerDocument
This property returns the Document object to which the node belongs. If the node itself is a document, then it returns null.
- parentNode
Syntax: node.parentNode
This is a read-only property that returns the parent node of all nodes except Document, DocumentFragment and Attr, which cannot have parent nodes.
- parsed
Syntax: node.parsed
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.
- prefix
Syntax: object.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.
- previousSibling
Syntax: node.previousSibling
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 an child node (Attr, Document, DocumentFragment).
- specified
Syntax: node.specified
This property returns a boolean value which indicates whether or not this attribute has a value specified in the XML document.
- text
Syntax: node.text
This property contains the text content of this node and its subtrees.
- xml
Syntax: node.xml
This property contains the XML representation of this node and its descendants.
Methods
- appendChild
Syntax: node.appendChild(tagName)
This method appends a new child node to the list of children for this node.
- appendData
Syntax: characterData.appendData(data)
This method appends the specified string to existing string data.
- cloneNode
Syntax: node.cloneNode(deep)
This method creates a clone node which is an exact replica of this node.
- deleteData
Syntax: characterData.deleteData(offset, count)
This method is used to remove the specified range of characters from string data.
- hasChildNodes
Syntax: node.hasChildNodes
This method is a convenient way to determine whether a node has child nodes, returning true if it has, and false if not.
- insertBefore
Syntax: node.insertBefore(newChild, refChild)
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.
- insertData
Syntax: characterData.insertData(offset, data)
This method is used to insert a string at the specified offset.
- removeChild
Syntax: node.removeChild(oldChild)
This method removes the specified node from the list of children and returns it.
- replaceChild
Syntax: node.replaceChild(newChild, oldChild)
This method is used to replace one of a node's children with another. It returns the old child.
- replaceData
Syntax: characterData.replaceData(offset, count, data)
This method replaces the characters from the specified offset with the supplied string data.
- selectNodes
Syntax: node.selectNodes(patternString)
This method creates a NodeList of all matching descendant nodes returned by the specified pattern-matching operation.
- selectSingleNode
Syntax: node.selectSingleNode(patternString)
This method returns an object for the first descendant node to match the specified pattern.
- substringData
Syntax: characterData.substringData(offset, count)
This method returns a substring consisting of the specified range of characters.
- transformNode
Syntax: node.transformNode(stylesheet)
This method processes this node and its descendants using the specified XSL stylesheet, and returns the resulting transformation.
- transformNodeToObject
Syntax: node.transformNodeToObject(stylesheet, outputObject)
This method processes this node and its descendants using the specified XSL stylesheet, and returns the resulting transformation in the specified object.
See Also:
