User's Guide

Document Object Model (DOM) parser

A DOM parser allows you to represent your XML document as a tree of nodes in your program. The DOM provides a common way of accessing general data structures from structured documents. A DOM parser can be used to process an XML file in Smalltalk.

Document Object Model (DOM)

The DOM standard is a W3C standard which describes mechanisms for software developers and Web script authors to access and manipulate parsed XML (and HTML) content. The DOM is platform- and language-neutral.

The DOM presents documents as a hierarchy of node objects that also implement other, more specialized interfaces. Methods that are part of the Document Object Model are saved in the AbtDOM-API category. The DOM API is documented at http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/CR-DOM-Level-2-19991210/core.html.

When to use the DOM parser

Use the DOM parser (AbtXmlDomParser) to read an XML file and return a representation of the file as a tree of objects. Most objects are subclasses of AbtDOMNode. You can then traverse the document tree and execute actions on the tree structure.

VisualAge support for the DOM level-2 specification

The VisualAge Smalltalk XML DOM parser is actually a SAX-2 parser which supplies an event handler for constructing DOM objects. Currently, VisualAge Smalltalk supports the core interfaces of DOM level-2.

The following table lists the Smalltalk classes that implement the interfaces from DOM level-2:

Interface Smalltalk implementor
Attr AbtDOMAttr
CDATASection AbtDOMCDataSection
Comment AbtDOMComment
Document AbtDOMDocument
DocumentFragment AbtDOMDocumentFragment
DocumentType AbtDOMDocumentType
DOMImplementation AbtDOMImplementation
DOMString String
Element AbtDOMElement
Entity AbtDOMEntity
Entity Reference

AbtDOMEntityReference

DOM Exception SgmlException
Named Node Map AbtDOMNamedNodeMap
Node AbtDOMNode
Node List

AbtDOMNodeList

Notation AbtDOMNotation
Processing Instruction AbtDOMProcessingInstruction

VisualAge deviations from the DOM level-2 specification

The VisualAge Smalltalk DOM parser deviates from the DOM level-2 specification as follows:


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