DOM Overview

This article has been excerpted from book "A Programmer's Guide to ADO.NET in C#".

Document Object Model

Document object model (DOM) is a platform and language neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update XML and HTML documents. The DOM API is a set of language independent, implementation neutral interfaces and objects based on the Object Management Group (OMG) Interface Definition Language (IDL) specification (not the COM) version of IDL). Set http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2/ for more detail.

DOM defines the logical structure of a document's data. You can access the document in a structured format (generally through a tree format). Tree nodes and entities represent the document's data. DOM also helps developers build XML and HTML documents, as well as to add, modify, delete, and navigate the document's data. Figure 6.2 shows you various contents of DOM in a tree structure.



Figure 6.2: DOM tree structure

This is the tree structure implementation of an XML file.

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>Mahesh </td>
    <td>Testing</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td> Second Line</td>
    <td> Tested</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Figure 6.3 shows the DOM tree representation of this XML.



Figure 6.3. XML DOM tree representation

In DOM, a document takes a hierarchical structure, which is similar to a tree structure. The document has a root node, and the rest of the document has branches and leaves.

These nodes are defines as interfaces object. You use the interfaces to access and manipulate document objects. The DOM core API also allows you to create and populate documents load documents and save them.

Table 6.3 defines some XML document nodes and node contents.

Table 6.3: XML Nodes

NODE	DESCRIPTION	CHILDREN
Document	Represent an HTML or XML document and root of the document tree	Element, ProcessingInstruction, DocumentType, Comment
DocumentType	Represent the document type attribute of a document	No children
Element	An element of the document	Element, Text, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, CDATASection, EntityReference
Attr	An attribute	Text, EntityReference
ProcessingInstruction	Represent a processing instruction; used in XML	No children
Comment	Represent comments in an XML or HTML document; characters between the starting <! - - and ending - - >	No children
Text	Text of a node	No children
Entity	An entity type item	Element, Text, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, CDATASection, EntityReference

Conclusion

Hope this article would have helped you in understanding DOM. See other articles on the website also for further reference.

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