2. Document Object Model Range
- Editors
- Peter Sharpe, SoftQuad Software Inc.
- Vidur Apparao, Netscape Communications Corp.
- Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc.
2.1. Introduction
A Range identifies a range of content in a Document, DocumentFragment or Attr. It is contiguous in the
sense that it can be characterized as selecting all of the content between a pair of
boundary-points.
Note: In a text editor or a word processor, a user can make a selection by pressing down the mouse
at one point in a document, moving the mouse to another point, and releasing the mouse. The resulting
selection is contiguous and consists of the content between the two points.
The term 'selecting' does not mean that every Range corresponds to a selection made by a GUI
user;however, such a selection can be returned to a DOM user as a Range.
Note: In bidirectional writing (Arabic, Hebrew), a range may correspond to a logical selection
that is not necessarily contiguous when displayed. A visually contiguous selection, also used in some
cases, may not correspond to a single logical selection, and may therefore have to be represented by
more than one range.
The Range interface provides methods for accessing and manipulating the document tree at a higher level
than similar methods in the Node interface. The expectation is that each of the methods provided by the
Range interface for the insertion, deletion and copying of content can be directly mapped to a series of
Node editing operations enabled by DOM Core. In this sense, the Range operations can be viewed as
convenience methods that also enable the implementation to optimize common editing patterns.
This chapter describes the Range interface, including methods for creating and moving a Range and methods
for manipulating content with Ranges.
The interfaces found within this section are not mandatory. A DOM application may use the hasFeature(feature,
version)
method of the DOMImplementation
interface with parameter values "Range" and
"2.0" (respectively) to determine whether or not this module is supported by the implementation. In
order to fully support this module, an implementation must also support the "Core" feature defined
defined in the DOM Level 2 Core specification [DOM
Level 2 Core]. Please refer to additional information about conformance in
the DOM Level 2 Core specification [DOM
Level 2 Core].
2.2. Definitions and Notation
2.2.1. Position
This chapter refers to two different representations of a document: the text or source form that
includes the document markup and the tree representation similar to the one described in the
introduction section of the DOM Level 2 Core [DOM
Level 2 Core].
A Range consists of two boundary-points corresponding to the start and the end of the
Range. A boundary-point's position in a
Document or DocumentFragment tree can be characterized by a node and an offset. The
node is called the container of the boundary-point and of its position. The container and its ancestors
are the ancestor containers of the boundary-point and of its position.The
offset within the node is called the offset of the boundary-point and its position. If the
container is an Attr, Document, DocumentFragment, Element or EntityReference node, the offset is
between its child nodes.
If the container is a CharacterData, Comment or ProcessingInstruction node, the offset is between
the 16-bit
units of the UTF-16 encoded string contained by it.
The boundary-points of
a Range must have a common ancestor
container which is either a Document, DocumentFragment or Attr node. That is, the
content of a Range must be entirely within the subtree rooted by a single Document, DocumentFragment
or Attr Node. This common ancestor
container is known as the root container of the Range. The
tree rooted by the root
container is known as the Range's context tree.
The container of
a boundary-point of
a Range must be an Element, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, EntityReference, CDATASection, Document,
DocumentFragment, Attr, or Text node. None of the ancestor
containers of the boundary-point of
a Range can be a DocumentType, Entity or Notation node.
In terms of the text representation of a document, the boundary-points of
a Range can only be on token boundaries. That is, the boundary-point of
the text range cannot be in the middle of a start- or end-tag of an element or within the name of an
entity or character reference. A Range locates a contiguous portion of the content of the structure
model.
The relationship between locations in a text representation of the document and in the Node tree
interface of the DOM is illustrated in the following diagram:
Range Example
In this diagram, four different Ranges are illustrated. The boundary-points of
each Range are labelled with s# (the start of the Range) and e# (the end of the
Range), where # is the number of the Range. For Range 2, the start is in the BODY element and is
immediately after the H1 element and immediately before the P element, so its position is between
the H1 and P children of BODY. The offset of
a boundary-point whose container is
not a CharacterData node is 0 if it is before the first child, 1 if between the first and second
child, and so on. So, for the start of the Range 2, thecontainer is
BODY and the offset is
1. The offset of
a boundary-point whose container is
a CharacterData node is obtained similarly but using 16-bit
unit positions instead. For example, theboundary-point labelled
s1 of the Range 1 has a Text node (the one containing "Title") as its container and
an offset of
2 since it is between the second and third 16-bit
unit.
Notice that the boundary-points
of Ranges 3 and 4 correspond to the same location in the text representation. An important feature
of the Range is that a boundary-point of
a Range can unambiguously represent every position within the document tree.
The containers
and offsets
of the boundary-points
can be obtained through the following read-only Range attributes:
readonly attribute Node startContainer;readonly attribute long startOffset;readonly attribute Node endContainer;readonly attribute long endOffset;
If the boundary-points
of a Range have the same containers
and offsets,
the Range is said to be a collapsed Range. (This is often referred to as an insertion point
in a user agent.)
2.2.2. Selection and Partial Selection
A node or 16-bit
unit unit is said to be selected by a Range if it is between the two boundary-points
of the Range, that is, if the position immediately before the node or 16-bit unit is before the end
of the Range and the position immediately after the node or 16-bit unit is after the start of the
range. For example, in terms of a text representation of the document, an element would be selectedby
a Range if its corresponding start-tag was located after the start of the Range and its end-tag was
located before the end of the Range. In the examples in the above diagram, the Range 2selects the
P node and the Range 3 selects the
text node containing the text "Blah xyz."
A node is said to be partially
selected by a Range if it is an ancestor
container of exactly one boundary-point of
the Range. For example, consider Range 1 in the above diagram. The element H1 is partially
selected by that Range since the start of the Range is within one of its children.
2.2.3. Notation
Many of the examples in this chapter are illustrated using a text representation of a document.
The boundary-points
of a Range are indicated by displaying the characters (be they markup or data characters) between
the two boundary-points
in bold, as in
When both boundary-points
are at the same position, they are indicated with a bold caret ('^'), as in
2.3. Creating a Range
A Range is created by calling the createRange()
method on the DocumentRange
interface.
This interface can be obtained from the object implementing the Document
interface using
binding-specific casting methods.
interface DocumentRange{Range createRange();}
The initial state of the Range returned from this method is such that both of its boundary-points
are positioned at the beginning of the corresponding Document, before any content. In other words,
the container of
each boundary-point is
the Document node and the offset within that node is 0.
Like some objects created using methods in the Document interface (such as Nodes and DocumentFragments),
Ranges created via a particular document instance can select only content associated with that Document,
or with DocumentFragments and Attrs for which that Document is the ownerDocument
. Such
Ranges, then, can not be used with other Document instances.
2.4. Changing a Range's Position
A Range's position can be specified by setting the container and offset of
each boundary-point with the setStart
and setEnd
methods.
void setStart(in Node parent, in long offset) raises(RangeException);void setEnd(in Node parent, in long offset) raises(RangeException);
If one boundary-point of a Range is set to have a root
container other than the current one for the Range, the Range is collapsed to
the new position. This enforces the restriction that both boundary-points of a Range must have the same root
container.
The start position of a Range is guaranteed to never be after the end position. To enforce this
restriction, if the start is set to be at a position after the end, the Range is collapsed to
that position. Similarly, if the end is set to be at a position before the start, the Range is collapsed to
that position.
It is also possible to set a Range's position relative to nodes in the tree:
void setStartBefore(in Node node);raises(RangeException);void setStartAfter(in Node node);raises(RangeException);void setEndBefore(in Node node);raises(RangeException);void setEndAfter(in Node node);raises(RangeException);
The parent of
the node becomes the container of
the boundary-point and
the Range is subject to the same restrictions as given above in the description
of setStart()
and setEnd()
.
A Range can be collapsed to
either boundary-point:
void collapse(in boolean toStart);
Passing TRUE
as the parameter toStart
will collapse the
Range to its start, FALSE
to its end.
Testing whether a Range is collapsed can
be done by examining the collapsed
attribute:
readonly attribute boolean collapsed;
The following methods can be used to make a Range select the contents of a node or the node itself.
void selectNode(in Node n);void selectNodeContents(in Node n);
The following examples demonstrate the operation of the methods selectNode
and selectNodeContents
:
Before: ^
A
B
C
After Range.selectNodeContents(FOO):
A
B
C
(In this case, FOO is the parent of both boundary-points)After Range.selectNode(FOO):
A
B
C
2.5. Comparing Range Boundary-Points
It is possible to compare two Ranges by comparing their boundary-points:
short compareBoundaryPoints(in CompareHow how, in Range sourceRange) raises(RangeException);
where CompareHow
is one of four
values: START_TO_START
, START_TO_END
, END_TO_END
and END_TO_START
.
The return value is -1, 0 or 1 depending on whether the corresponding boundary-point of the Range is
before, equal to, or after the corresponding boundary-point of sourceRange
. An exception is
thrown if the two Ranges have different root
containers.
The result of comparing two boundary-points (or positions) is specified below. An informal but not always
correct specification is that an boundary-point is before, equal to, or after another if it corresponds
to a location in a text representation before, equal to, or after the other's corresponding
location.
Let A and B be two boundary-points or positions. Then one
of the following holds: A is before B, A is equal to B, or A is after B. Which one
holds is specified in the following by examining four cases:
In the first case the boundary-points have the same container.
A is before B if its offset is
less than the offset of
B, A is equal to B if its offset is
equal to the offset of
B, and A is after B if its offset is
greater than the offset of
B.
In the second case a child node C of the container of
A is an ancestor
container of B. In this case, A is before B if the offset of
A is less than or equal to the index of the child node C and A is afterB otherwise.
In the third case a child node C of the container of
B is an ancestor
container of A. In this case, A is before B if the index of the child node C is less
than the offset of
B and A is after B otherwise.
In the fourth case, none of three other cases hold: the containers of A and B are siblings or descendants of
sibling nodes. In this case, A is before B if the container of
A is before the container of
B in a pre-order traversal of the Ranges' context
tree and A is after B otherwise.
Note that because the same location in a text representation of the document can correspond to two
different positions in the DOM tree, it is possible for two boundary-points to not compare equal even
though they would be equal in the text representation. For this reason, the informal definition above
can sometimes be incorrect.
2.6. Deleting Content with a Range
One can delete the contents selected by a Range with:
deleteContents()
deletes all nodes and characters selected by the Range. All other nodes and
characters remain in the context
tree of the Range. Some examples of this deletion operation are:
After deleteContents()
is invoked on a Range, the Range is collapsed.
If no node was partially
selected by the Range, then it is collapsed to
its original start point, as in example (1). If a node was partially
selected by the Range and was an ancestor
container of the start of the Range and no ancestor of
the node satisfies these two conditions, then the Range is collapsed to the position immediately after
the node, as in examples (2) and (4). If a node was partially
selected by the Range and was an ancestor
container of the end of the Range and no ancestor of the node satisfies these two
conditions, then the Range is collapsed to the position immediately before the node, as in examples (3)
and (4).
Note that if deletion of a Range leaves adjacent Text nodes, they are not automatically merged, and empty
Text nodes are not automatically removed. Two Text nodes should be joined only if each is the container
of one of the boundary-points of a Range whose contents are deleted. To merge adjacent Text nodes, or
remove empty text nodes, the normalize()
method on the Node
interface should be
used.
If the contents of a Range need to be extracted rather than deleted, the following method may be
used:
DocumentFragment extractContents();
The extractContents()
method removes nodes from the Range's context
tree similarly to the deleteContents()
method. In addition, it places the deleted
contents in a new DocumentFragment
. The following examples illustrate the contents of the
returned DocumentFragment:
It is important to note that nodes that are partially
selected by the Range are cloned. Since part of such a node's contents must remain in the
Range's context
tree and part of the contents must be moved to the new DocumentFragment, a clone of the partially
selected node is included in the new DocumentFragment. Note that cloning does not take
place for selected elements;these
nodes are moved to the new DocumentFragment.
2.8. Cloning Content
The contents of a Range may be duplicated using the following method:
DocumentFragment cloneContents();
This method returns a DocumentFragment
that is similar to the one returned by the
method extractContents()
. However, in this case, the original nodes and character data in
the Range are not removed from the Range's context
tree. Instead, all of the nodes and text content within the
returned DocumentFragment
are cloned.
2.9. Inserting Content
A node may be inserted into a Range using the following method:
void insertNode(in Node n) raises(RangeException);
The insertNode()
method inserts the specified node into the Range's context
tree. The node is inserted at the start boundary-point of
the Range, without modifying it.
If the start boundary point of the Range is in a Text
node, the insertNode
operation
splits the Text
node at the boundary point. If the node to be inserted is also
a Text
node, the resulting adjacentText
nodes are not normalized
automatically;this operation is left to the application.
The Node passed into this method can be a DocumentFragment
. In that case, the contents of
the DocumentFragment
are inserted at the start boundary-point of
the Range, but the DocumentFragment
itself is not. Note that if the Node represents the root
of a sub-tree, the entire sub-tree is inserted.
The same rules that apply to the insertBefore()
method on the Node interface apply here.
Specifically, the Node passed in, if it already has a parent, will be removed from its existing
position.
2.10. Surrounding Content
The insertion of a single node to subsume the content selected by a Range can be performed with:
void surroundContents(in Node newParent);
The surroundContents()
method causes all of the content selected by the Range to be rooted
by the specified node. The nodes may not be Attr, Entity, DocumentType, Notation, Document, or
DocumentFragment nodes. Calling surroundContents()
with the Element node FOO in the
following examples yields:
Before: AB
C
DE
After surroundContents(FOO):A
B
C
D
E
Another way of describing the effect of this method on the Range's context
tree is to decompose it in terms of other operations:
- Remove the contents selected by the Range with a call to
extractContents()
.
- Insert the node
newParent
where the Range is collapsed (after the extraction)
with insertNode().
- Insert the entire contents of the extracted DocumentFragment into
newParent
.
Specifically, invoke the appendChild()
on newParent
passing in the
DocumentFragment returned as a result of the call to extractContents()
- Select
newParent
and all of its contents with selectNode()
.
The surroundContents()
method raises an exception if the Range partially
selects a non-Text node. An example of a Range for which surroundContents()
raises
an exception is:
If the node newParent
has any children, those children are removed before its insertion.
Also, if the node newParent
already has a parent, it is removed from the original parent's childNodes
list.
2.11. Miscellaneous Members
One can clone a Range:
This creates a new Range which selects exactly the same content as that selected by the Range on which
the method cloneRange
was invoked. No content is affected by this operation.
Because the boundary-points of a Range do not necessarily have the same containers,
use:
readonly attribute Node commonAncestorContainer;
to get the ancestor
container of both boundary-points that is furthest down from the Range's root
container
One can get a copy of all the character data selected or partially selected by a Range with:
This does nothing more than simply concatenate all the character data selected by the Range. This
includes character data in both Text
and CDATASection
nodes.
2.12. Range modification under document mutation
As a document is modified, the Ranges within the document need to be updated. For example, if one
boundary-point of a Range is within a node and that node is removed from the document, then the Range
would be invalid unless it is fixed up in some way. This section describes how Ranges are modified under
document mutations so that they remain valid.
There are two general principles which apply to Ranges under document mutation: The first is that all
Ranges in a document will remain valid after any mutation operation and the second is that, as much as
possible, all Ranges will select the same portion of the document after any mutation operation.
Any mutation of the document tree which affect Ranges can be considered to be a combination of basic
deletion and insertion operations. In fact, it can be convenient to think of those operations as being
accomplished using the deleteContents()
and insertNode()
Range methods and, in
the case of Text mutations, the splitText()
and normalize()
methods.
2.12.1. Insertions
An insertion occurs at a single point, the insertion point, in the document. For any Range in the
document tree, consider each boundary-point. The only case in which the boundary-point will be
changed after the insertion is when the boundary-point and the insertion point have the same container and
the offset of
the insertion point is strictly less than the offset of
the Range's boundary-point. In that case the offset of
the Range's boundary-point will be increased so that it is between the same nodes or characters as
it was before the insertion.
Note that when content is inserted at a boundary-point, it is ambiguous as to where the
boundary-point should be repositioned if its relative position is to be maintained. There are two
possibilities: at the start or at the end of the newly inserted content. We have chosen that in this
case neither the container nor offset of
the boundary-point is changed. As a result, the boundary-point will be positioned at the start of
the newly inserted content.
Examples:
Suppose the Range selects the following:
Consider the insertion of the text "inserted text" at the following positions:
1. Before the 'X':Abcd efgh inserted textXY blah ijkl
2. After the 'X':Abcd efgh Xinserted textY blah ijkl
3. After the 'Y':
Abcd efgh XYinserted text blah ijkl
4. After the 'h' in "Y blah":Abcd efgh XY
blahinserted text ijkl
2.12.2. Deletions
Any deletion from the document tree can be considered as a sequence of deleteContents()
operations
applied to a minimal set of disjoint Ranges. To specify how a Range is modified under deletions we
need only consider what happens to a Range under a single deleteContents()
operation of
another Range. And, in fact, we need only consider what happens to a single boundary-point of the
Range since both boundary-points are modified using the same algorithm.
If a boundary-point of the original Range is within the content being deleted, then after the
deletion it will be at the same position as the resulting boundary-point of the (now collapsed)
Range used to delete the contents.
If a boundary-point is after the content being deleted then it is not affected by the deletion unless
its container is
also the container of
one of the boundary-points of the Range being deleted. If there is such a common container,
then the index of the boundary-point is modified so that the boundary-point maintains its position
relative to the content of the container.
If a boundary-point is before the content being deleted then it is not affected by the deletion at
all.
Examples:
In these examples, the Range on which deleteContents()
is invoked is indicated by the
underline.
Example 1.
Before:
After:
Example 2.
Before:
After:
Example 3.
Before:
After:
In this example, the container of the start boundary-point after the deletion is the Text node
holding the string "ange".
Example 4.
Before:
After:
Example 5.
Before:
After:
2.13. Formal Description of the Range Interface
To summarize, the complete, formal description of the Range
interface
is given below:
- Interface Range (introduced in DOM Level 2)
-
IDL Definition
-
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:interface Range{readonly attribute Node startContainer;// raises(DOMException) on retrieval readonly attribute long startOffset;// raises(DOMException) on retrieval readonly attribute Node endContainer;// raises(DOMException) on retrieval readonly attribute long endOffset;// raises(DOMException) on retrieval readonly attribute boolean collapsed;// raises(DOMException) on retrieval readonly attribute Node commonAncestorContainer;// raises(DOMException) on retrieval void setStart(in Node refNode, in long offset) raises(RangeException, DOMException);void setEnd(in Node refNode, in long offset) raises(RangeException, DOMException);void setStartBefore(in Node refNode) raises(RangeException, DOMException);void setStartAfter(in Node refNode) raises(RangeException, DOMException);void setEndBefore(in Node refNode) raises(RangeException, DOMException);void setEndAfter(in Node refNode) raises(RangeException, DOMException);void collapse(in boolean toStart) raises(DOMException);void selectNode(in Node refNode) raises(RangeException, DOMException);void selectNodeContents(in Node refNode) raises(RangeException, DOMException);// CompareHow const unsigned short START_TO_START=0;const unsigned short START_TO_END=1;const unsigned short END_TO_END=2;const unsigned short END_TO_START=3;short compareBoundaryPoints(in unsigned short how, in Range sourceRange) raises(DOMException);void deleteContents() raises(DOMException);DocumentFragment extractContents() raises(DOMException);DocumentFragment cloneContents() raises(DOMException);void insertNode(in Node newNode) raises(DOMException, RangeException);void surroundContents(in Node newParent) raises(DOMException, RangeException);Range cloneRange() raises(DOMException);DOMString toString() raises(DOMException);void detach() raises(DOMException);};
- Definition group CompareHow
Passed as a parameter to the compareBoundaryPoints
method.
- Defined
Constants
-
END_TO_END
- Compare end boundary-point
of
sourceRange
to end boundary-point of Range on which compareBoundaryPoints
is
invoked.
END_TO_START
- Compare end boundary-point
of
sourceRange
to start boundary-point of Range on which compareBoundaryPoints
is
invoked.
START_TO_END
- Compare start boundary-point of
sourceRange
to
end boundary-point of Range on which compareBoundaryPoints
is
invoked.
START_TO_START
- Compare start boundary-point of
sourceRange
to
start boundary-point of Range on which compareBoundaryPoints
is
invoked.
- Attributes
-
collapsed
of
type boolean
, readonly
- TRUE if the Range is collapsed
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
commonAncestorContainer
of
type Node
, readonly
- The deepest common ancestor
container of the Range's two boundary-points.
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
endContainer
of
type Node
, readonly
- Node within which the Range ends
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
endOffset
of
type long
, readonly
- Offset within the ending node of the
Range.
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
startContainer
of
type Node
, readonly
- Node within which the Range begins
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
startOffset
of
type long
, readonly
- Offset within the starting node of the
Range.
Exceptions on retrieval
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
- Methods
-
cloneContents
-
Duplicates the contents of a Range
Return Value
DocumentFragment
|
A DocumentFragment that contains content equivalent to
this Range. |
Exceptions
DOMException
|
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if a DocumentType node
would be extracted into the new DocumentFragment.
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Parameters
cloneRange
-
Produces a new Range whose boundary-points are equal to the
boundary-points of the Range.
Return Value
Range
|
The duplicated Range. |
Exceptions
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Parameters
collapse
-
Collapse a Range onto one of its boundary-points
Parameters
-
toStart
of
type boolean
- If TRUE, collapses
the Range onto its start;if FALSE, collapses it onto its
end.
Exceptions
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Return Value
compareBoundaryPoints
-
Compare the boundary-points of two Ranges in a document.
Parameters
-
how
of
type unsigned short
- A code representing
the type of comparison, as defined above.
-
sourceRange
of
type Range
-
The
Range
on which this current Range
is
compared to.
Return Value
short
|
-1, 0 or 1 depending on whether the corresponding
boundary-point of the Range is respectively before, equal
to, or after the corresponding boundary-point ofsourceRange .
|
Exceptions
DOMException
|
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if the two Ranges are not in
the same Document or DocumentFragment.
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
deleteContents
-
Removes the contents of a Range from the containing document or
document fragment without returning a reference to the removed content.
Exceptions
DOMException
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if any portion of the
content of the Range is read-only or any of the nodes that
contain any of the content of the Range are read-only.
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Parameters
No Return Value
detach
-
Called to indicate that the Range is no longer in use and that
the implementation may relinquish any resources associated with this Range.
Subsequent calls to any methods or attribute getters on this Range will result
in a
DOMException
being thrown with an error code of
INVALID_STATE_ERR
.
Exceptions
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Parameters
No Return Value
-
Moves the contents of a Range from the containing document or
document fragment to a new DocumentFragment.
Return Value
DocumentFragment
|
A DocumentFragment containing the extracted contents.
|
Exceptions
DOMException
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if any portion of the
content of the Range is read-only or any of the nodes which
contain any of the content of the Range are read-only.
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if a DocumentType node
would be extracted into the new DocumentFragment.
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Parameters
insertNode
-
Inserts a node into the Document or DocumentFragment at the
start of the Range. If the container is a Text node, this will be split at the
start of the Range (as if the Text node's splitText method was performed at the
insertion point) and the insertion will occur between the two resulting Text
nodes. Adjacent Text nodes will not be automatically merged. If the node to be
inserted is a DocumentFragment node, the children will be inserted rather than
the DocumentFragment node itself.
Parameters
-
newNode
of
type Node
- The node to insert
at the start of the Range
Exceptions
DOMException
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if an ancestor
container of the start of the Range is read-only.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newNode and
the container of
the start of the Range were not created from the same
document.
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if the container of
the start of the Range is of a type that does not allow
children of the type of newNode or
if newNode is an ancestor of the container.
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
RangeException
|
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if newNode is
an Attr, Entity, Notation, or Document node. |
No Return Value
selectNode
-
Select a node and its contents
Parameters
-
refNode
of
type Node
- The node to
select.
Exceptions
RangeException
|
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if an ancestor of refNode is
an Entity, Notation or DocumentType node or
if refNode is a Document, DocumentFragment,
Attr, Entity, or Notation node. |
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Return Value
selectNodeContents
-
Select the contents within a node
Parameters
-
refNode
of
type Node
- Node to select
from
Exceptions
RangeException
|
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if refNode or
an ancestor of refNode is an Entity, Notation
or DocumentType node. |
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Return Value
setEnd
-
Sets the attributes describing the end of a Range.
Parameters
-
refNode
of
type Node
-
The
refNode
value. This parameter must be different
from null
.
-
offset
of
type long
-
The
endOffset
value.
Exceptions
RangeException
|
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if refNode or
an ancestor of refNode is an Entity, Notation,
or DocumentType node. |
DOMException
|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if offset is negative
or greater than the number of child units
in refNode . Child units are 16-bit
units if refNode is a type of
CharacterData node (e.g., a Text or Comment node) or a
ProcessingInstruction node. Child units are Nodes in all
other cases.
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Return Value
setEndAfter
-
Sets the end of a Range to be after a node
Parameters
-
refNode
of
type Node
- Range ends
after
refNode
.
Exceptions
RangeException
|
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if the root container
of refNode is not an Attr, Document or
DocumentFragment node or if refNode is a
Document, DocumentFragment, Attr, Entity, or Notation node.
|
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Return Value
setEndBefore
-
Sets the end position to be before a node.
Parameters
-
refNode
of
type Node
- Range ends
before
refNode
Exceptions
RangeException
|
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if the root container
of refNode is not an Attr, Document, or
DocumentFragment node or if refNode is a
Document, DocumentFragment, Attr, Entity, or Notation node.
|
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Return Value
setStart
-
Sets the attributes describing the start of the Range.
Parameters
-
refNode
of
type Node
-
The
refNode
value. This parameter must be different
from null
.
-
offset
of
type long
- The
startOffset
value.
Exceptions
RangeException
|
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if refNode or
an ancestor of refNode is an Entity, Notation,
or DocumentType node. |
DOMException
|
INDEX_SIZE_ERR: Raised if offset is negative
or greater than the number of child units
in refNode . Child units are 16-bit
units if refNode is a type of
CharacterData node (e.g., a Text or Comment node) or a
ProcessingInstruction node. Child units are Nodes in all
other cases.
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Return Value
setStartAfter
-
Sets the start position to be after a node
Parameters
-
refNode
of
type Node
- Range starts
after
refNode
Exceptions
RangeException
|
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if the root container
of refNode is not an Attr, Document, or
DocumentFragment node or if refNode is a
Document, DocumentFragment, Attr, Entity, or Notation node.
|
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Return Value
setStartBefore
-
Sets the start position to be before a node
Parameters
-
refNode
of
type Node
- Range starts before
refNode
Exceptions
RangeException
|
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if the root container
of refNode is not an Attr, Document, or
DocumentFragment node or if refNode is a
Document, DocumentFragment, Attr, Entity, or Notation node.
|
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Return Value
surroundContents
-
Reparents the contents of the Range to the given node and
inserts the node at the position of the start of the Range.
Parameters
-
newParent
of
type Node
- The node to surround
the contents with.
Exceptions
DOMException
|
NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if an ancestor
container of either boundary-point of the Range is
read-only.
WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newParent and
the container of
the start of the Range were not created from the same
document.
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: Raised if the container of
the start of the Range is of a type that does not allow
children of the type of newParent or
ifnewParent is an ancestor of the container or
if node would end up with a child node of a
type not allowed by the type of node .
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
RangeException
|
BAD_BOUNDARYPOINTS_ERR: Raised if the Range partially
selects a non-text node.
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR: Raised if node is an
Attr, Entity, DocumentType, Notation, Document, or
DocumentFragment node. |
No Return Value
toString
-
Returns the contents of a Range as a string. This string
contains only the data characters, not any markup.
Return Value
DOMString
|
The contents of the Range. |
Exceptions
DOMException
|
INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if detach() has
already been invoked on this object. |
No Parameters
- Interface DocumentRange (introduced
in DOM Level 2)
-
IDL Definition
-
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:interface DocumentRange{Range createRange();};
- Methods
-
createRange
-
This interface can be obtained from the object implementing the
Document
interface
using binding-specific casting methods.
Return Value
Range
|
The initial state of the Range returned from this method
is such that both of its boundary-points are positioned at
the beginning of the corresponding Document, before any
content. The Range returned can only be used to select
content associated with this Document, or with
DocumentFragments and Attrs for which this Document is
the ownerDocument . |
No Parameters
No Exceptions
- Exception RangeException introduced
in DOM Level 2
Range operations may throw a RangeException
as
specified in their method descriptions.
IDL Definition
-
// Introduced in DOM Level 2:exception RangeException{unsigned short code;};// RangeExceptionCodeconst unsigned short BAD_BOUNDARYPOINTS_ERR=1;const unsigned short INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR=2;
- Definition group RangeExceptionCode
An integer indicating the type of error
generated.
- Defined
Constants
-
BAD_BOUNDARYPOINTS_ERR
- If the boundary-points of a
Range do not meet specific requirements.
INVALID_NODE_TYPE_ERR
- If the container of
an boundary-point of a Range is being set to either a node of an invalid
type or a node with an ancestor of an invalid type.