1. /*

  2.  * Copyright (c) 2000 World Wide Web Consortium,

  3.  * (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institut National de

  4.  * Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Keio University). All

  5.  * Rights Reserved. This program is distributed under the W3C's Software

  6.  * Intellectual Property License. This program is distributed in the

  7.  * hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even

  8.  * the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR

  9.  * PURPOSE.

  10.  * See W3C License http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ for more details.

  11.  */

  12. 

  13. package org.w3c.dom;

  14. 

  15. /**

  16.  * <code>DocumentFragment</code> is a "lightweight" or "minimal" 

  17.  * <code>Document</code> object. It is very common to want to be able to 

  18.  * extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of a 

  19.  * document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or rearranging a 

  20.  * document by moving fragments around. It is desirable to have an object 

  21.  * which can hold such fragments and it is quite natural to use a Node for 

  22.  * this purpose. While it is true that a <code>Document</code> object could 

  23.  * fulfill this role, a <code>Document</code> object can potentially be a 

  24.  * heavyweight object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is 

  25.  * really needed for this is a very lightweight object. 

  26.  * <code>DocumentFragment</code> is such an object.

  27.  * <p>Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children 

  28.  * of another <code>Node</code> -- may take <code>DocumentFragment</code> 

  29.  * objects as arguments; this results in all the child nodes of the 

  30.  * <code>DocumentFragment</code> being moved to the child list of this node.

  31.  * <p>The children of a <code>DocumentFragment</code> node are zero or more 

  32.  * nodes representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of 

  33.  * the document. <code>DocumentFragment</code> nodes do not need to be 

  34.  * well-formed XML documents (although they do need to follow the rules 

  35.  * imposed upon well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top 

  36.  * nodes). For example, a <code>DocumentFragment</code> might have only one 

  37.  * child and that child node could be a <code>Text</code> node. Such a 

  38.  * structure model represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML 

  39.  * document.

  40.  * <p>When a <code>DocumentFragment</code> is inserted into a 

  41.  * <code>Document</code> (or indeed any other <code>Node</code> that may 

  42.  * take children) the children of the <code>DocumentFragment</code> and not 

  43.  * the <code>DocumentFragment</code> itself are inserted into the 

  44.  * <code>Node</code>. This makes the <code>DocumentFragment</code> very 

  45.  * useful when the user wishes to create nodes that are siblings; the 

  46.  * <code>DocumentFragment</code> acts as the parent of these nodes so that 

  47.  * the user can use the standard methods from the <code>Node</code> 

  48.  * interface, such as <code>insertBefore</code> and <code>appendChild</code>.

  49.  * <p>See also the <a href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Core-20001113'>Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Specification</a>.

  50.  */

  51. public interface DocumentFragment extends Node {

  52. }