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Copyright © 1994-2000 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.

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W3C Software Copyright Notice and License

Note: This section is a copy of the W3C Software Copyright Notice and License and could be found at http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software-19980720

Copyright © 1994-2000 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.

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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, the container 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, the boundary-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.)

    <FOO>ABC<BAR>DEF</BAR></FOO>
                 

    <FOO>A^BC<BAR>DEF</BAR></FOO>

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:
  ^<BAR><FOO>A<MOO>B</MOO>C</FOO></BAR>
After Range.selectNodeContents(FOO):
  <BAR><FOO>A<MOO>B</MOO>C</FOO></BAR>
(In this case, FOO is the parent of both boundary-points)
After Range.selectNode(FOO):

<BAR><FOO>A<MOO>B</MOO>C</FOO></BAR>

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 after B 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:

(1) <FOO>AB<MOO>CD</MOO>CD</FOO>  -->
<FOO>A^CD</FOO>

(2) <FOO>A<MOO>BC</MOO>DE</FOO>  -->
<FOO>A<MOO>B</MOO>^E</FOO>

(3) <FOO>XY<BAR>ZW</BAR>Q</FOO>  -->
<FOO>X^<BAR>W</BAR>Q</FOO>

(4) <FOO><BAR1>AB</BAR1><BAR2/><BAR3>CD</BAR3></FOO>
-->  <FOO><BAR1>A</BAR1>^<BAR3>D</BAR3>

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:

(1) <FOO>AB<MOO>CD</MOO>CD</FOO>  -->
B<MOO>CD</MOO>

(2) <FOO>A<MOO>BC</MOO>DE</FOO>  -->
<MOO>C<MOO>D

(3) <FOO>XY<BAR>ZW</BAR>Q</FOO>  -->
Y<BAR>Z</BAR>

(4)
<FOO><BAR1>AB</BAR1><BAR2/><BAR3>CD</BAR3></FOO> -->
<BAR1>B</BAR1><BAR2/><BAR3>C</BAR3>

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 adjacent Text 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:
       <BAR>AB<MOO>C</MOO>DE</BAR>

     After surroundContents(FOO):

<BAR>A<FOO>B<MOO>C</MOO>D</FOO>E</BAR>

Another way of describing the effect of this method on the Range's context tree is to decompose it in terms of other operations:

1. Remove the contents selected by the Range with a call to extractContents().
2. Insert the node newParent where the Range is collapsed (after the extraction) with insertNode().
3. 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()
4. 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:

     <FOO>AB<BAR>CD</BAR>E</FOO>

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.

<P>Abcd efgh XY blah ijkl</P>

1. Before the 'X':

<P>Abcd efgh inserted textXY blah ijkl</P>

2. After the 'X':

<P>Abcd efgh Xinserted textY blah ijkl</P>

3. After the 'Y':

<P>Abcd efgh XYinserted text blah ijkl</P>

4. After the 'h' in "Y blah":

<P>Abcd efgh XY blahinserted text ijkl</P>

<P>Abcd efgh The Range ijkl</P>

<p>Abcd efgh The Range ijkl</p>

<P>ABCD efgh The <EM>Range</EM> ijkl</P>

<P>ABCD <EM>ange</EM> ijkl</P>

<P>Abcd efgh The Range ijkl</P>

<P>Abcd he Range ijkl</P>

<P>Abcd <EM>efgh The Range ij</EM>kl</P>

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 of sourceRange.

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 if newParent 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;
};
// RangeExceptionCode
const 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.

D.1: Production Systems

This specification was written in XML. The HTML, OMG IDL, Java and ECMA Script bindings were all produced automatically.

Thanks to Joe English, author of cost, which was used as the basis for producing DOM Level 1. Thanks also to Gavin Nicol, who wrote the scripts which run on top of cost. Arnaud Le Hors and Philippe Le Hégaret maintained the scripts.

For DOM Level 2, we used Xerces as the basis DOM implementation and wish to thank the authors. Philippe Le Hégaret and Arnaud Le Hors wrote the Java programs which are the DOM application.

Thanks also to Jan Kärrman, author of html2ps, which we use in creating the PostScript version of the specification.