Entity

The Entity object represents the actual entity (parsed or unparsed), and not the entity declaration. If an XML processor expands entities before passing the structure model to the DOM, the document tree will contain no EntityReference nodes.

XML does not require a non-validating processor to expand external entities. If this is the case, the replacement value of the entity may not be available. Where the replacement value is available, the corresponding Entity node's child list represents the structure of the replacement text. Otherwise the child list is empty.

An Entity does not have a parent node, and all its descendants are read-only.

The name of an Entity is contained in the nodeName property.

An Entity is also a Node object, and so inherits various properties and methods from it. For details of the values returned by the nodeName, nodeType and nodeValue properties for an Entity, see the Node object.

Examples

Code:

XML:



<!DOCTYPE staff SYSTEM "staff.dtd" [


    <!ENTITY snrex "senior executive">


    <!ENTITY pa "personal assistant">


 ]>



VBScript:



Set objXMLDoc = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")


 objXMLDoc.async = False


 objXMLDoc.load("staff.xml")



 Set DocType = objXMLDoc.docType


 Set EntList = DocType.entities


 Set Ent = EntList(0)


 document.write(Ent.nodeName & ": " &  Ent.text)

Output:

snrex: senior executive

Explanation:

In this example the 'staff.xml' file is used which contains a couple of entities defined in the DOCTYPE declaration. The code gets a DocumentType object for this document, and produces a NamedNodeMap of all its entities. It then displays the name and text of the first of these.

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.

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.

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.

notationName

Syntax: object.notationName

This property contains the name of the notation for unparsed entities, and null for parsed entities.

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).

publicID

Syntax: object.publicID

This is a read-only property that contains the public identifier for the entity. If none was specified, it contains null.

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.

systemID

Syntax: object.systemID

This is a read-only property that contains the system identifier for the entity. If none was specified, it contains null.

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.

cloneNode

Syntax: node.cloneNode(deep)

This method creates a clone node which is an exact replica of this node.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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