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## org.w3c.dom
Interface DocumentFragment

All Superinterfaces:
  Node

    public interface DocumentFragment

extends Node

`DocumentFragment` is a "lightweight" or "minimal" `Document` object. It is very common to want to be able to extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of a document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or rearranging a document by moving fragments around. It is desirable to have an object which can hold such fragments and it is quite natural to use a Node for this purpose. While it is true that a `Document` object could fulfill this role, a `Document` object can potentially be a heavyweight object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is really needed for this is a very lightweight object. `DocumentFragment` is such an object.

Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children of another `Node` -- may take `DocumentFragment` objects as arguments; this results in all the child nodes of the `DocumentFragment` being moved to the child list of this node.

The children of a `DocumentFragment` node are zero or more nodes representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of the document. `DocumentFragment` nodes do not need to be well-formed XML documents (although they do need to follow the rules imposed upon well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top nodes). For example, a `DocumentFragment` might have only one child and that child node could be a `Text` node. Such a structure model represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML document.

When a `DocumentFragment` is inserted into a `Document` (or indeed any other `Node` that may take children) the children of the `DocumentFragment` and not the `DocumentFragment` itself are inserted into the `Node`. This makes the `DocumentFragment` very useful when the user wishes to create nodes that are siblings; the `DocumentFragment` acts as the parent of these nodes so that the user can use the standard methods from the `Node` interface, such as `Node.insertBefore` and `Node.appendChild`.

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

Field Summary

Fields inherited from interface org.w3c.dom.Node
`ATTRIBUTE_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINED_BY, DOCUMENT_POSITION_CONTAINS, DOCUMENT_POSITION_DISCONNECTED, DOCUMENT_POSITION_FOLLOWING, DOCUMENT_POSITION_IMPLEMENTATION_SPECIFIC, DOCUMENT_POSITION_PRECEDING, DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE, ELEMENT_NODE, ENTITY_NODE, ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE, NOTATION_NODE, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE, TEXT_NODE`

Method Summary

Methods inherited from interface org.w3c.dom.Node
`appendChild, cloneNode, compareDocumentPosition, getAttributes, getBaseURI, getChildNodes, getFeature, getFirstChild, getLastChild, getLocalName, getNamespaceURI, getNextSibling, getNodeName, getNodeType, getNodeValue, getOwnerDocument, getParentNode, getPrefix, getPreviousSibling, getTextContent, getUserData, hasAttributes, hasChildNodes, insertBefore, isDefaultNamespace, isEqualNode, isSameNode, isSupported, lookupNamespaceURI, lookupPrefix, normalize, removeChild, replaceChild, setNodeValue, setPrefix, setTextContent, setUserData`

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For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java 2 SDK SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

Copyright 2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Also see the documentation redistribution policy.