---
name: "XML::LibXML::Attr"
section: "3pm"
platform: "linux"
package: "perl-xml-libxml"
version: "2.0213-2"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/XML::LibXML::Attr"
---

# XML::LibXML::Attr(3pm)

XML::LibXML Attribute Class

## NAME

XML::LibXML::Attr - XML::LibXML Attribute Class

## SYNOPSIS

```
  use XML::LibXML;
  # Only methods specific to Attribute nodes are listed here,
  # see the XML::LibXML::Node manpage for other methods
  $attr = XML::LibXML::Attr->new($name [,$value]);
  $string = $attr->getValue();
  $string = $attr->value;
  $attr->setValue( $string );
  $node = $attr->getOwnerElement();
  $attr->setNamespace($nsURI, $prefix);
  $bool = $attr->isId;
  $string = $attr->serializeContent;
```

## DESCRIPTION

This is the interface to handle Attributes like ordinary nodes. The naming of the class relies on the W3C DOM documentation.

## METHODS

The class inherits from XML::LibXML::Node. The documentation for Inherited methods is not listed here.

Many functions listed here are extensively documented in the DOM Level 3 specification (\<http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/\>). Please refer to the specification for extensive documentation.

- new

  ```
    $attr = XML::LibXML::Attr->new($name [,$value]);
  ```

  Class constructor. If you need to work with ISO encoded strings, you should *always* use the `"createAttribute"` of XML::LibXML::Document.

- getValue

  ```
    $string = $attr->getValue();
  ```

  Returns the value stored for the attribute. If undef is returned, the attribute has no value, which is different of being `"not specified"`.

- value

  ```
    $string = $attr->value;
  ```

  Alias for ***getValue()***

- setValue

  ```
    $attr->setValue( $string );
  ```

  This is needed to set a new attribute value. If ISO encoded strings are passed as parameter, the node has to be bound to a document, otherwise the encoding might be done incorrectly.

- getOwnerElement

  ```
    $node = $attr->getOwnerElement();
  ```

  returns the node the attribute belongs to. If the attribute is not bound to a node, undef will be returned. Overwriting the underlying implementation, the *parentNode* function will return undef, instead of the owner element.

- setNamespace

  ```
    $attr->setNamespace($nsURI, $prefix);
  ```

  This function tries to bound the attribute to a given namespace. If `$nsURI` is undefined or empty, the function discards any previous association of the attribute with a namespace. If the namespace was not previously declared in the context of the attribute, this function will fail. In this case you may wish to call **setNamespace()** on the ownerElement. If the namespace URI is non-empty and declared in the context of the attribute, but only with a different (non-empty) prefix, then the attribute is still bound to the namespace but gets a different prefix than `$prefix`. The function also fails if the prefix is empty but the namespace URI is not (because unprefixed attributes should by definition belong to no namespace). This function returns 1 on success, 0 otherwise.

- isId

  ```
    $bool = $attr->isId;
  ```

  Determine whether an attribute is of type ID. For documents with a DTD, this information is only available if DTD loading/validation has been requested. For HTML documents parsed with the HTML parser ID detection is done automatically. In XML documents, all "xml:id" attributes are considered to be of type ID.

- serializeContent($docencoding)

  ```
    $string = $attr->serializeContent;
  ```

  This function is not part of DOM API. It returns attribute content in the form in which it serializes into XML, that is with all meta-characters properly quoted and with raw entity references (except for entities expanded during parse time). Setting the optional `$docencoding` flag to 1 enforces document encoding for the output string (which is then passed to Perl as a byte string). Otherwise the string is passed to Perl as (UTF-8 encoded) characters.

## AUTHORS

Matt Sergeant, Christian Glahn, Petr Pajas

## VERSION

2\.0213

## COPYRIGHT

2001-2007, AxKit.com Ltd.

2002-2006, Christian Glahn.

2006-2009, Petr Pajas.

## LICENSE

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.