---
name: "domNode"
section: "n"
platform: "macos"
package: "tcl"
version: "152"
release: "macOS 26.5"
platforms: ["macos"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/domNode/n"
---

# domNode(n)

Manipulates an instance of a DOM node object

```

```

## NAME

domNode - Manipulates an instance of a DOM node object

## SYNOPSIS

```
 $nodeObject method  arg arg ...
```

```

```

## DESCRIPTION

This command manipulates one particular instance of a DOM node object. *method* indicates a specific method of the node class. These methods should closely conform to the W3C recommendation "Document Object Model (Core) Level 1" (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/level-one-core.html) as well to parts of the W3C draft "XML Pointer Language (XPointer)" (http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/WD-xptr-19980303). Please note, that the XPointer methods are deprecated. Use DOM methods or XPath expressions instead of them.

The selectNodes method implements the "XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0" W3C recommendation 16 November 1999 (http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xpath-19991116). Look at these documents for a deeper understanding of the functionality.

The valid methods are:

- **nodeType**

  Returns the node type of that node object. This can be: ELEMENT\_NODE, TEXT\_NODE, CDATA\_SECTION\_NODE, COMMENT\_NODE or PROCESSING\_INSTRUCTION\_NODE.

- **nodeName**

  Returns the node name of that node object. This is the element (tag) name for element nodes (type ELEMENT\_NODE), the processing-instruction target for processing-instructions, "#text" for text node, "#comment" for comment nodes or "#cdata" for cdata section nodes.

- **nodeValue** *?newValue?*

  Returns the value of that node object. This is the the text or the data for element nodes of type TEXT\_NODE, COMMENT\_NODE, PROCESSING\_INSTRUCTION\_NODE or CDATA\_SECTION\_NODE). Otherwise it is empty. If the node is a TEXT\_NODE, COMMENT\_NODE or PROCESSING\_INSTRUCTION\_NODE and the optional argument *newValue* is given, the node is set to that value.

- **hasChildNodes**

  Returns 1 if the has children. Otherwise 0 is returned.

- **parentNode ?objVar?**

  Returns the parent node.

- **childNodes**

  Returns a list of direct children node objects.

- **childNodesLive**

  Returns a "live" nodeList object of the child nodes of the node in the sense of the DOM recommendation. This nodeList object is "live" in the sense that, for instance, changes to the children of the node object that it was created from are immediately reflected in the nodes returned by the NodeList accessors; it is not a static snapshot of the content of the node. The both accessors know by the nodeList object are "item \<index\>", which returns the indexth item in the collection, and "length", which returns the number of nodes in the list.

- **firstChild ?objVar?**

  Returns the first child as a node object.

- **lastChild ?objVar?**

  Returns the last child as a node object.

- **nextSibling ?objVar?**

  Returns the next sibling relativ to the current node as a node object.

- **previousSibling ?objVar?**

  Returns the next sibling relativ to the current node as a node object.

- **getElementsByTagName** *name*

  Returns a list of all elements in the subtree matching (glob style) *name*.

- **getElementsByTagNameNS** *uri* *localname*

  Returns a list of all elements in the subtree matching (glob style) *localname* and having the given namespace *uri*.

- **getElementById** *id*

  Returns the node having a id attribute with value *id* or the emtpy string, if no node has an id attribute with that value.

- **hasAttribute** *attributeName*

  Returns 1 if the object node contains an attribute with name *attributeName* . Otherwise 0 is returned.

- **getAttribute** *attributeName ?defaultValue?*

  Returns the value of the attribute *attributeName*. If attribute is not available *defaultValue* is returned.

- **setAttribute** *attributeName newValue ?attributeName newValue ...?*

  Sets the value for one or more attributes. Every *attributeName* is set to the corresponding *newValue*. If there isn't an attribute for one or more of the *attributeName* this will create that attribute.

- **removeAttribute** *attributeName*

  Removes the attribute *attributeName*.

- **hasAttributeNS** *uri* *localName*

  Returns 1 if the object node contains an attribute with the local name *localName* within the namespace *uri*.  Otherwise 0 is returned.

- **getAttributeNS** *uri* *localName ?defaultValue?*

  Returns the value of the attribute with the local name *localName* within the namespace URI *uri*. If the node dosn't have that attribute the *defaultValue* is returned.

- **setAttributeNS** *uri qualifiedName newValue ?uri qualifiedName newValue ...?*

  Sets the value for one or more full qualified attributes. Every attribute *qualifiedName* with the namespace URI *uri* will be set to *newValue*. This will create a new attribute, if it wasn't avialble before. If you want to set an attribute within a namespace you must specify the attribute name with prefix, even if you want to set an already existing attribute to a new value. While searching, if the attribute already exists, only the given *uri* and the localname of the *qualifiedName* is used.

  ```
  $node setAttributeNS "http://some.uri.com/wow" prefix:attr1 attrValue
  ```

  If the uri is the empty string and the attribute name hasn't a prefix, this method has the same effect as the method **setAttribute**.

  ```
  $node setAttributeNS "" attri "some Value"
  ```

  XML namespace nodes are not in any namespace. Set them this way:

  ```
  $node setAttributeNS "" xmlns:myprefix "myNamespaceURI"
  $node setAttributeNS "" xmlns "newDefaultNamespace"
  ```

  If your *qualifiedName* has the prefix "xml" and you give the empty string as *uri*, the namespace of the attribute defaults to "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", as the DOM 2 recommendation requests. With the exceptions of the special prefixes "xmlns" and "xml" you always must provide a non emtpy *uri*, if your *qualifiedName* has a prefix.

- **removeAttributeNS** *uri* *localName*

  Removes the attribute with the local name *localName* within the namespace *uri*.

- **attributes ?attributeNamePattern?**

  Returns all attributes matching the *attributeNamePattern*. If *attributeNamePattern* isn't given all attributes are returned as a Tcl list.

- **appendChild** *newChild*

  Append *newChild* to the end of the child list of the node.

- **insertBefore** *newChild* *refChild*

  Insert *newChild* before the *refChild* into the list of children of node. If *refChild* is the empty string, insert *newChild* at the end of the child nodes list of that node.

- **replaceChild** *newChild* *oldChild*

  Replace *oldChild* with *newChild* in the list of children of that node. The *oldChild* node will be part of the document fragment list after this operation.

- **removeChild** *child*

  Removes *child* from the list of children of that node *child* will be part of the document fragment list after this operation. It is not physically deleted.

- **delete**

  Deletes the given node and its complete child tree and frees the complete internal memory. The affected nodes are not accessible through the document fragment list.

- **cloneNode ?-deep?**

  Clones this node and adds the new create node into the document fragment list. If the *-deep* option is specified, all descendant nodes are also cloned.

- **ownerDocument ?domObjVar?**

  Returns the document object of the document this node belongs to.

- **find** *attrName* *attrVal* **?objVar?**

  Finds the node with the attribute name *attrName*, and attribute value *attrVal* in the subtree starting the current node.

- **child** *number\|all* **type attrName attrValue**

  (XPointer) child

- **descendant** *number\|all* **type attrName attrValue**

  (XPointer) descendant

- **ancestor** *number\|all* **type attrName attrValue**

  (XPointer) ancestor

- **fsibling** *number\|all* **type attrName attrValue**

  (XPointer) fsibling

- **psibling** *number\|all* **type attrName attrValue**

  (XPointer) psibling

- **root objVar**

  (XPointer) root

- **text**

  Returns all text node children of that current node combined, i.e. appended into one string.

- **target**

  For a processing instruction node the target part is returned. Otherwise an error is generated.

- **data**

  For a processing instruction node the data part is returned. For a text node, comment node or cdata section node the value is returned. Otherwise an error is generated.

- **prefix**

  Returns the namespace prefix.

- **namespaceURI**

  Returns the namespace URI.

- **localName**

  Returns the localName from the tag name of the given node.

- **selectNodes ?-namespaces prefixUriList? ?-cache \<boolean\>?** *xpathQuery* **?typeVar?**

  Returns the result of applying the XPath query *xpathQuery* to the subtree. This can be a string/value, a list of strings, a list of nodes or a list of attribute name / value pairs. If *typeVar* is given the result type name is stored into that variable (empty, bool, number, string, nodes, attrnodes or mixed).

  The argument *xpathQuery* has to be a valid XPath expression. However, there is one exception to that rule. Tcl variable names can appear in the XPath statement at any position where it is legal according to the rules of the XPath syntax to put an XPath variable. The value of the variable is substituted for the variable name. Ignoring the syntax rules of XPath the Tcl variable name may be any legal Tcl var name: local variables, global variables, array entries and so on.

  The option *-namespaces* expects a tcl list with prefix / namespace pairs as argument. If this option is not given, then any namespace prefix within the xpath expression will be first resolved against the list of prefix / namespace pairs set with the selectNodesNamespaces method for the document, the node belongs to. If this fails, then the namespace definitions in scope of the context node will be used to resolve the prefix. If this option is given, any namespace prefix within the xpath expression will be first resolved against that given list (and ignoring the document global prefix / namespace list). If the list bind the same prefix to different namespaces, then the first binding will win.  If this fails, then the namespace definitions in scope of the context node will be used to resolve the prefix, as usual.

  If the *-cache* option is used with a true value, then the *xpathQuery* will be looked up in a document specific cache. If the query is found, then the stored pre-compiled query will be used. If the query isn't found, it will be pre-compiled and stored in the cache, for use in further calls. Please notice, that the *xpathQuery* as given as string is used as key for the cache. This means, that equal XPath expressions, which differ only in white space are treated as different cache entries. Special care is needed, if the XPath expression includes namespace prefixes. During pre-compilation, the prefixes will be resolved first to the prefix / namespace pairs of the *-namespaces* option, if given, and to the namespaces in scope of the context node at pre-compilation time. If the XPath is found in the cache, neither the *-namespaces* option nor the namespaces in scope of the context node will be taken in account but the already resolved (stored) namespaces will be used for the query.

  Examples:

  ```
  set paragraphNodes [$node selectNodes {chapter[3]//para[@type='warning' or @type='error'} ]
  foreach paragraph $paragraphNodes {
      lappend  values [$paragraph selectNodes attribute::type]
  }
  set doc [dom parse {<doc xmlns="http://www.defaultnamespace.org"><child/></doc>}]
  set root [$doc documentElement]
  set childNodes [$root selectNodes -namespaces {default http://www.defaultnamespace.org} default:child]
  ```

- **getLine**

  Returns the line number of that node in the orignal parsed XML.

- **getColumn**

  Returns the column number of that node in the orignal parsed XML.

- **asList**

  Returns the DOM substree starting form the current node as a nested Tcl list.

- **asXML ?-indent none/1..8? ?-channel channelId? ?-escapeNonASCII??-escapeAllQuot?**

  Returns the DOM substree starting from the current node as the root node of the result as an (optional indented) XML string or sends the output directly to the given channelId. If the option *-escapeNonASCII* is given, every non 7 bit ASCII character in attribute values or element PCDATA content will be escaped as character reference in decimal representation. If the option *-escapeAllQuot* is given, quotation marks will be escaped with &quot; even in text content of elements.

- **asHTML ?-channel channelId? ?-escapeNonASCII? ?-htmlEntities?**

  Returns the DOM substree starting from the current node as the root node of the result serialized acording to HTML rules (HTML elements are recognized regardless of case, without end tags for emtpy HTML elements etc.), as string or sends the output directly to the given channelId. If the option *-escapeNonASCII* is given, every non 7 bit ASCII character in attribute values or element PCDATA content will be escaped as character reference in decimal representation. If the option *-htmlEntities* is given, a character is outputed using a HTML 4.01 character entity reference, if one is defined for it.

- **asText**

  For ELEMENT\_NODEs, the asText method outputs the string-value of every text node descendant of node in document order without any escaping. For every other node type, this method outputs the the XPath string value of that node.

- **appendFromList** *list*

  Parses *list* , creates an according DOM subtree and appends this subtree to the current node.

- **appendFromScript** *tclScript*

  Appends the nodes created in the *tclScript* by Tcl functions, which have been built using *dom createNodeCmd*, to the given node.

- **insertBeforeFromScript** *tclScript* *refChild*

  Inserts the nodes created in the *tclScript* by Tcl functions, which have been built using *dom createNodeCmd*, before the *refChild* into to the list of children of node. If *refChild* is the empty string, the new nodes will be appended.

- **appendXML** *XMLstring*

  Parses *XMLstring*, creates an according DOM subtree and appends this subtree to the current node.

- **simpleTranslate** *outputVar* *specifications*

  Translate the subtree starting at the object node according to the specifications in *specifications* and outputs the result in the variable *outputVar* . The translation is very similar to Cost Simple mode.

- **toXPath**

  Returns an XPath, which exactly addresses the given node in its document. This XPath is only valid as there are no changes to DOM tree made later one.

- **getBaseURI**

  Returns the baseURI of the node. This method is deprecated in favor of the *baseURI* method.

- **baseURI** *?URI?*

  Returns the present baseURI of the node. If the optional argument URI is given, sets the base URI of the node and of all of its child nodes out of the same enitity as node to the given URI.

- **disableOutputEscaping** *?boolean?*

  This method works only for text nodes; for every other nodes it returns error. Without the optional argument it returns, if disabling output escaping is on. The return value 0 means, the characters of the text node will be escaped, to generate valid XML, if serialized. This is the default for every parsed or created text node (with the exception of that text nodes in a result tree of an XSLT transformation, for which disabling output escaping was requested explicitely in the stylesheet). The return value 1 means, that output escaping is disabled for this text node. If such a text node is serialized (with asXML or asHTML), it is literarily written, without escaping of the special XML characters. If the optional boolean value *boolean* is given, the flag is set accordingly. You should not set this flag to 1, until you really know, what you do.

- **precedes** *refnode*

  Compares the relative order of the node and *refnode*. Both nodes must be part of the same documents and not out of the fragment list of the document. Returns true, if node is in document order (in the sense of the XPath 1.0 recommendation) before *refnode* and false otherwise.

- **normalize** *?-forXPath?*

  Puts all Text nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree underneath this Node into a "normal" form where only structure (e.g., elements, comments, processing instructions and CDATA sections) separates Text nodes, i.e., there are neither adjacent Text nodes nor empty Text nodes. If the option *-forXPath* is given, all CDATA sections in the nodes are converted to text nodes, as a first step before the normalization.

- **xslt ?-parameters parameterList? ?-ignoreUndeclaredParameters? ?-xsltmessagecmd script?** *stylesheet* *?outputVar?*

  Applies an XSLT transformation on the document using the XSLT *stylesheet* (given as domDoc). Returns a document object containing the result document of that transformation and stores it in the optional *outputVar*.

  The optional *-parameters* option sets top level \<xsl:param\> to string values. The *parameterList* has to be a tcl list consisting of parameter name and value pairs.

  If the option *-ignoreUndeclaredParameters* is given, then parameter names in the *parameterList* given to the *-parameters* options that are not declared as top-level parameters in the stylesheet are silently ignored. Without this option, an error is raised, if the user tries to set a top-level parameter, which is not declared in the stylesheet.

  The *-xsltmessagecmd* option sets a callback for xslt:message elements in the stylesheet. The actual command consists of the script, given as argument to the option, appended with the XML Fragment from instantiating the xsl:message element content as string (as if the XPath string() function would have been applied to the XML Fragment) and a flag, which indicates, if the xsl:message has an attribute "terminate" with the value "yes".

- *@attrName*

  Returns the value of the attribute *attrName*.  Short cut for *getAttribute*.

Otherwise, if an unknown method name is given, the command with the same name as the given method within the namespace **::dom::domNode** is tried to be executed. This allows quick method additions on Tcl level.

## SEE ALSO

dom, domDoc

## KEYWORDS

XML, DOM, document, node, parsing
