Python and the XML Document Object Model (DOM) with 4Suite |  |
Python and the XML Document Object Model (DOM) with 4Suite | |
All the different kinds of nodes in a DOM tree share
these attributes from class Node:
.nodeType
The type of the node as an integer constant.
.ELEMENT_NODE, .ATTRIBUTE_NODE, etc.
All nodes have a set of constant attributes that
define the .nodeType values
for the various node types. Here is a table
showing all these constants:
.ATTRIBUTE_NODE
| Represents an attribute of an XML element. |
.CDATA_SECTION_NODE
| Represents a CDATA section. |
.COMMENT_NODE
|
Represents a comment
(<!-- ... -->).
|
.DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
| Represents a fragment of a document. |
.DOCUMENT_NODE
| Represents an entire document. |
.DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
|
Represents a document type identifier
(<!DOCTYPE ... >).
|
.ELEMENT_NODE
| Represents an XML element. |
.ENTITY_NODE
| Represents an entity. |
.ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
|
Represents a reference to an entity
(&...;).
|
.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
|
Represents a processing instruction
(<? ... ?>).
|
.TEXT_NODE
| Represents some text. |
.nodeName
The name of the node.
In an element node, this is the element name
(e.g., "chapter" for a
<chapter>...</chapter>
element).
For an Attr node, it is
the attribute name.
For a document type node, it is the name of the document type.
For a processing instruction, it is the target name.
.nodeValue
The value of the node.
For an attribute node, it is the attribute's value as a string.
For a CDATA section, comment, or text node, it is the text inside the CDATA section, comment, or text section.
For a processing instruction, it is the content part.
.attributes
Used only for Element nodes, its value is a
Python dictionary containing the element's attributes.
In this dictionary, the key of each attribute is a
2-tuple (,
where:
nsURI, localName)
nsURI
is the attribute's namespace URI, or None for the default namespace.
localNameis the attribute's unqualified name.
The corresponding value for that key is the attribute value as a Unicode string.
For example, for an attribute expressed as class='alarm', the key would be (None, u'class') and the value would be
u'alarm'.
.childNodes
If the element has children, this attribute is a list
of Node objects containing its
children in document order.
For Element nodes, this is a list
of its child elements; its attributes are not
considered children in this sense.
For Document or
DocumentFragment nodes, the
children might include comments, document types,
and processing instructions, as well as an element
child that is the root of the XML document.
.firstChild
If the element has children, this attribute will be set to the first child.
.lastChild
If the element has children, this attribute will be the last child.
.localName
For Element or Attr nodes, holds the local part of a fully
qualified name. For example, if the element name
is "xsl:template', the
.localName attribute is
"template".
.namespaceURI
For names with a namespace prefix, holds the URI
associated with the namespace; otherwise
None. Compare the
.prefix attribute.
.nextSibling
The next child of the same parent, if any,
otherwise None.
.ownerDocument
For every node in the tree, this attribute points
at the Document node that roots the
tree.
.parentNode
The element's parent node, or None if
the element is the root of the tree.
.prefix
The namespace prefix of the element, or
None if it doesn't have one.
For example, if in this document namespace prefix
xsl: is defined by
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
then the .prefix attribute of
an xsl:template element's
.prefix attribute would be
"xsl", and its
.namespaceURI attribute would
be
"http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform".
.previousSibling
The element's parent's previous child if there is
one, otherwise None.
Methods on Node objects include:
Once you have created a node newChild
(e.g., with Section 12.1, “Document.createElementNS()”), use
this method to attach it to a parent node N
N.appendChild(newChild)
If N