Added in API level 1

Text

interface Text : CharacterData

org.w3c.dom.Text

Known Direct Subclasses CDATASection CDATASection CDATA sections are used to escape blocks of text containing characters that would otherwise be regarded as markup.

The Text interface inherits from CharacterData and represents the textual content (termed character data in XML) of an Element or Attr. If there is no markup inside an element's content, the text is contained in a single object implementing the Text interface that is the only child of the element. If there is markup, it is parsed into the information items (elements, comments, etc.) and Text nodes that form the list of children of the element.

When a document is first made available via the DOM, there is only one Text node for each block of text. Users may create adjacent Text nodes that represent the contents of a given element without any intervening markup, but should be aware that there is no way to represent the separations between these nodes in XML or HTML, so they will not (in general) persist between DOM editing sessions. The Node.normalize() method merges any such adjacent Text objects into a single node for each block of text.

No lexical check is done on the content of a Text node and, depending on its position in the document, some characters must be escaped during serialization using character references; e.g. the characters "<&" if the textual content is part of an element or of an attribute, the character sequence "]]>" when part of an element, the quotation mark character " or the apostrophe character ' when part of an attribute.

See also the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification.

Summary

Inherited constants

From class Node Short ATTRIBUTE_NODE The node is an Attr. Short CDATA_SECTION_NODE The node is a CDATASection. Short COMMENT_NODE The node is a Comment. Short DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE The node is a DocumentFragment. Short DOCUMENT_NODE The node is a Document. Short DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINED_BY The node is contained by the reference node. A node which is contained is always following, too. Short DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINS The node contains the reference node. A node which contains is always preceding, too. Short DOCUMENT_POSITION_DISCONNECTED The two nodes are disconnected. Order between disconnected nodes is always implementation-specific. Short DOCUMENT_POSITION_FOLLOWING The node follows the reference node. Short DOCUMENT_POSITION_IMPLEMENTATION_SPECIFIC The determination of preceding versus following is implementation-specific. Short DOCUMENT_POSITION_PRECEDING The second node precedes the reference node. Short DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE The node is a DocumentType. Short ELEMENT_NODE The node is an Element. Short ENTITY_NODE The node is an Entity. Short ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE The node is an EntityReference. Short NOTATION_NODE The node is a Notation. Short PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE The node is a ProcessingInstruction. Short TEXT_NODE The node is a Text node.

Public methods
abstract String!	getWholeText() Returns all text of Text nodes logically-adjacent text nodes to this node, concatenated in document order.
abstract Boolean	isElementContentWhitespace() Returns whether this text node contains element content whitespace, often abusively called "ignorable whitespace".
abstract Text!	replaceWholeText(content: String!) Replaces the text of the current node and all logically-adjacent text nodes with the specified text.
abstract Text!	splitText(offset: Int) Breaks this node into two nodes at the specified offset, keeping both in the tree as siblings.

Inherited functions
From class Node Node! appendChild(newChild: Node!) Adds the node newChild to the end of the list of children of this node. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed. Node! cloneNode(deep: Boolean) Returns a duplicate of this node, i.e., serves as a generic copy constructor for nodes. The duplicate node has no parent ( parentNode is null) and no user data. User data associated to the imported node is not carried over. However, if any UserDataHandlers has been specified along with the associated data these handlers will be called with the appropriate parameters before this method returns. Cloning an Element copies all attributes and their values, including those generated by the XML processor to represent defaulted attributes, but this method does not copy any children it contains unless it is a deep clone. This includes text contained in an the Element since the text is contained in a child Text node. Cloning an Attr directly, as opposed to be cloned as part of an Element cloning operation, returns a specified attribute (specified is true). Cloning an Attr always clones its children, since they represent its value, no matter whether this is a deep clone or not. Cloning an EntityReference automatically constructs its subtree if a corresponding Entity is available, no matter whether this is a deep clone or not. Cloning any other type of node simply returns a copy of this node. Note that cloning an immutable subtree results in a mutable copy, but the children of an EntityReference clone are readonly . In addition, clones of unspecified Attr nodes are specified. And, cloning Document, DocumentType, Entity, and Notation nodes is implementation dependent. Short compareDocumentPosition(other: Node!) Compares the reference node, i.e. the node on which this method is being called, with a node, i.e. the one passed as a parameter, with regard to their position in the document and according to the document order. NamedNodeMap! getAttributes() A NamedNodeMap containing the attributes of this node (if it is an Element) or null otherwise. String! getBaseURI() The absolute base URI of this node or null if the implementation wasn't able to obtain an absolute URI. This value is computed as described in . However, when the Document supports the feature "HTML" [DOM Level 2 HTML] , the base URI is computed using first the value of the href attribute of the HTML BASE element if any, and the value of the documentURI attribute from the Document interface otherwise. NodeList! getChildNodes() A NodeList that contains all children of this node. If there are no children, this is a NodeList containing no nodes. Any! getFeature(feature: String!, version: String!) This method returns a specialized object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version, as specified in . The specialized object may also be obtained by using binding-specific casting methods but is not necessarily expected to, as discussed in . This method also allow the implementation to provide specialized objects which do not support the Node interface. Node! getFirstChild() The first child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null. Node! getLastChild() The last child of this node. If there is no such node, this returns null. String! getLocalName() Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node. For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as Document.createElement(), this is always null. String! getNamespaceURI() The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified (see ). This is not a computed value that is the result of a namespace lookup based on an examination of the namespace declarations in scope. It is merely the namespace URI given at creation time. For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as Document.createElement(), this is always null. Note: Per the Namespaces in XML Specification [XML Namespaces] an attribute does not inherit its namespace from the element it is attached to. If an attribute is not explicitly given a namespace, it simply has no namespace. Node! getNextSibling() The node immediately following this node. If there is no such node, this returns null. String! getNodeName() The name of this node, depending on its type; see the table above. Short getNodeType() A code representing the type of the underlying object, as defined above. String! getNodeValue() The value of this node, depending on its type; see the table above. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect, including if the node is read-only. Document! getOwnerDocument() The Document object associated with this node. This is also the Document object used to create new nodes. When this node is a Document or a DocumentType which is not used with any Document yet, this is null. Node! getParentNode() The parent of this node. All nodes, except Attr, Document, DocumentFragment, Entity, and Notation may have a parent. However, if a node has just been created and not yet added to the tree, or if it has been removed from the tree, this is null. String! getPrefix() The namespace prefix of this node, or null if it is unspecified. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect, including if the node is read-only. Note that setting this attribute, when permitted, changes the nodeName attribute, which holds the qualified name, as well as the tagName and name attributes of the Element and Attr interfaces, when applicable. Setting the prefix to null makes it unspecified, setting it to an empty string is implementation dependent. Note also that changing the prefix of an attribute that is known to have a default value, does not make a new attribute with the default value and the original prefix appear, since the namespaceURI and localName do not change. For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as createElement from the Document interface, this is always null. Node! getPreviousSibling() The node immediately preceding this node. If there is no such node, this returns null. String! getTextContent() This attribute returns the text content of this node and its descendants. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect. On setting, any possible children this node may have are removed and, if it the new string is not empty or null, replaced by a single Text node containing the string this attribute is set to. On getting, no serialization is performed, the returned string does not contain any markup. No whitespace normalization is performed and the returned string does not contain the white spaces in element content (see the attribute Text.isElementContentWhitespace). Similarly, on setting, no parsing is performed either, the input string is taken as pure textual content. The string returned is made of the text content of this node depending on its type, as defined below: Node type Content ELEMENT_NODE, ATTRIBUTE_NODE, ENTITY_NODE, ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE, DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE concatenation of the textContent attribute value of every child node, excluding COMMENT_NODE and PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE nodes. This is the empty string if the node has no children. TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE nodeValue DOCUMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE, NOTATION_NODE null Any! getUserData(key: String!) Retrieves the object associated to a key on a this node. The object must first have been set to this node by calling setUserData with the same key. Boolean hasAttributes() Returns whether this node (if it is an element) has any attributes. Boolean hasChildNodes() Returns whether this node has any children. Node! insertBefore(newChild: Node!, refChild: Node!) Inserts the node newChild before the existing child node refChild. If refChild is null, insert newChild at the end of the list of children. If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, all of its children are inserted, in the same order, before refChild. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed. Note: Inserting a node before itself is implementation dependent. Boolean isDefaultNamespace(namespaceURI: String!) This method checks if the specified namespaceURI is the default namespace or not. Boolean isEqualNode(arg: Node!) Tests whether two nodes are equal. This method tests for equality of nodes, not sameness (i.e., whether the two nodes are references to the same object) which can be tested with Node.isSameNode(). All nodes that are the same will also be equal, though the reverse may not be true. Two nodes are equal if and only if the following conditions are satisfied: The two nodes are of the same type. The following string attributes are equal: nodeName, localName, namespaceURI, prefix, nodeValue . This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and are character for character identical. The attributes NamedNodeMaps are equal. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and for each node that exists in one map there is a node that exists in the other map and is equal, although not necessarily at the same index. The childNodes NodeLists are equal. This is: they are both null, or they have the same length and contain equal nodes at the same index. Note that normalization can affect equality; to avoid this, nodes should be normalized before being compared. For two DocumentType nodes to be equal, the following conditions must also be satisfied: The following string attributes are equal: publicId, systemId, internalSubset. The entities NamedNodeMaps are equal. The notations NamedNodeMaps are equal. On the other hand, the following do not affect equality: the ownerDocument, baseURI, and parentNode attributes, the specified attribute for Attr nodes, the schemaTypeInfo attribute for Attr and Element nodes, the Text.isElementContentWhitespace attribute for Text nodes, as well as any user data or event listeners registered on the nodes. Note: As a general rule, anything not mentioned in the description above is not significant in consideration of equality checking. Note that future versions of this specification may take into account more attributes and implementations conform to this specification are expected to be updated accordingly. Boolean isSameNode(other: Node!) Returns whether this node is the same node as the given one. This method provides a way to determine whether two Node references returned by the implementation reference the same object. When two Node references are references to the same object, even if through a proxy, the references may be used completely interchangeably, such that all attributes have the same values and calling the same DOM method on either reference always has exactly the same effect. Boolean isSupported(feature: String!, version: String!) Tests whether the DOM implementation implements a specific feature and that feature is supported by this node, as specified in . String! lookupNamespaceURI(prefix: String!) Look up the namespace URI associated to the given prefix, starting from this node. See for details on the algorithm used by this method. String! lookupPrefix(namespaceURI: String!) Look up the prefix associated to the given namespace URI, starting from this node. The default namespace declarations are ignored by this method. See for details on the algorithm used by this method. Unit normalize() Puts all Text nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree underneath this Node, including attribute nodes, into a "normal" form where only structure (e.g., elements, comments, processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity references) separates Text nodes, i.e., there are neither adjacent Text nodes nor empty Text nodes. This can be used to ensure that the DOM view of a document is the same as if it were saved and re-loaded, and is useful when operations (such as XPointer [XPointer] lookups) that depend on a particular document tree structure are to be used. If the parameter "normalize-characters" of the DOMConfiguration object attached to the Node.ownerDocument is true, this method will also fully normalize the characters of the Text nodes. Note: In cases where the document contains CDATASections, the normalize operation alone may not be sufficient, since XPointers do not differentiate between Text nodes and CDATASection nodes. Node! removeChild(oldChild: Node!) Removes the child node indicated by oldChild from the list of children, and returns it. Node! replaceChild(newChild: Node!, oldChild: Node!) Replaces the child node oldChild with newChild in the list of children, and returns the oldChild node. If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, oldChild is replaced by all of the DocumentFragment children, which are inserted in the same order. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed. Note: Replacing a node with itself is implementation dependent. Unit setNodeValue(nodeValue: String!) The value of this node, depending on its type; see the table above. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect, including if the node is read-only. Unit setPrefix(prefix: String!) The namespace prefix of this node, or null if it is unspecified. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect, including if the node is read-only. Note that setting this attribute, when permitted, changes the nodeName attribute, which holds the qualified name, as well as the tagName and name attributes of the Element and Attr interfaces, when applicable. Setting the prefix to null makes it unspecified, setting it to an empty string is implementation dependent. Note also that changing the prefix of an attribute that is known to have a default value, does not make a new attribute with the default value and the original prefix appear, since the namespaceURI and localName do not change. For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as createElement from the Document interface, this is always null. Unit setTextContent(textContent: String!) This attribute returns the text content of this node and its descendants. When it is defined to be null, setting it has no effect. On setting, any possible children this node may have are removed and, if it the new string is not empty or null, replaced by a single Text node containing the string this attribute is set to. On getting, no serialization is performed, the returned string does not contain any markup. No whitespace normalization is performed and the returned string does not contain the white spaces in element content (see the attribute Text.isElementContentWhitespace). Similarly, on setting, no parsing is performed either, the input string is taken as pure textual content. The string returned is made of the text content of this node depending on its type, as defined below: Node type Content ELEMENT_NODE, ATTRIBUTE_NODE, ENTITY_NODE, ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE, DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE concatenation of the textContent attribute value of every child node, excluding COMMENT_NODE and PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE nodes. This is the empty string if the node has no children. TEXT_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE nodeValue DOCUMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE, NOTATION_NODE null Any! setUserData(key: String!, data: Any!, handler: UserDataHandler!) Associate an object to a key on this node. The object can later be retrieved from this node by calling getUserData with the same key.
From class CharacterData Unit appendData(arg: String!) Append the string to the end of the character data of the node. Upon success, data provides access to the concatenation of data and the DOMString specified. Unit deleteData(offset: Int, count: Int) Remove a range of 16-bit units from the node. Upon success, data and length reflect the change. String! getData() The character data of the node that implements this interface. The DOM implementation may not put arbitrary limits on the amount of data that may be stored in a CharacterData node. However, implementation limits may mean that the entirety of a node's data may not fit into a single DOMString. In such cases, the user may call substringData to retrieve the data in appropriately sized pieces. Int getLength() The number of 16-bit units that are available through data and the substringData method below. This may have the value zero, i.e., CharacterData nodes may be empty. Unit insertData(offset: Int, arg: String!) Insert a string at the specified 16-bit unit offset. Unit replaceData(offset: Int, count: Int, arg: String!) Replace the characters starting at the specified 16-bit unit offset with the specified string. Unit setData(data: String!) The character data of the node that implements this interface. The DOM implementation may not put arbitrary limits on the amount of data that may be stored in a CharacterData node. However, implementation limits may mean that the entirety of a node's data may not fit into a single DOMString. In such cases, the user may call substringData to retrieve the data in appropriately sized pieces. String! substringData(offset: Int, count: Int) Extracts a range of data from the node.

Public methods

getWholeText

Added in API level 8

abstract fun getWholeText(): String!

Returns all text of Text nodes logically-adjacent text nodes to this node, concatenated in document order.
For instance, in the example below wholeText on the Text node that contains "bar" returns "barfoo", while on the Text node that contains "foo" it returns "barfoo".

isElementContentWhitespace

Added in API level 8

abstract fun isElementContentWhitespace(): Boolean

Returns whether this text node contains element content whitespace, often abusively called "ignorable whitespace". The text node is determined to contain whitespace in element content during the load of the document or if validation occurs while using Document.normalizeDocument().

replaceWholeText

Added in API level 8

abstract fun replaceWholeText(content: String!): Text!

Replaces the text of the current node and all logically-adjacent text nodes with the specified text. All logically-adjacent text nodes are removed including the current node unless it was the recipient of the replacement text.
This method returns the node which received the replacement text. The returned node is:

• null, when the replacement text is the empty string;
• the current node, except when the current node is read-only;
• a new Text node of the same type ( Text or CDATASection) as the current node inserted at the location of the replacement.

For instance, in the above example calling replaceWholeText on the Text node that contains "bar" with "yo" in argument results in the following:
Where the nodes to be removed are read-only descendants of an EntityReference, the EntityReference must be removed instead of the read-only nodes. If any EntityReference to be removed has descendants that are not EntityReference, Text, or CDATASection nodes, the replaceWholeText method must fail before performing any modification of the document, raising a DOMException with the code NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR.
For instance, in the example below calling replaceWholeText on the Text node that contains "bar" fails, because the EntityReference node "ent" contains an Element node which cannot be removed.

Parameters
content	String!: The content of the replacing Text node.

Return
Text!	The Text node created with the specified content.

Exceptions
org.w3c.dom.DOMException	NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if one of the Text nodes being replaced is readonly.

splitText

Added in API level 1

abstract fun splitText(offset: Int): Text!

Breaks this node into two nodes at the specified offset, keeping both in the tree as siblings. After being split, this node will contain all the content up to the offset point. A new node of the same type, which contains all the content at and after the offset point, is returned. If the original node had a parent node, the new node is inserted as the next sibling of the original node. When the offset is equal to the length of this node, the new node has no data.

Parameters
offset	Int: The 16-bit unit offset at which to split, starting from 0.

Return
Text!	The new node, of the same type as this node.

Exceptions
org.w3c.dom.DOMException	INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if the specified offset is negative or greater than the number of 16-bit units in data. NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.