001/*
002 * Copyright (c) 2004 World Wide Web Consortium,
003 *
004 * (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for
005 * Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. This
006 * work is distributed under the W3C(r) Software License [1] in the hope that
007 * it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
008 * warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
009 *
010 * [1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231
011 */
012
013package org.w3c.dom;
014
015/**
016 * This interface represents a known entity, either parsed or unparsed, in an
017 * XML document. Note that this models the entity itself <em>not</em> the entity declaration.
018 * <p>The <code>nodeName</code> attribute that is inherited from
019 * <code>Node</code> contains the name of the entity.
020 * <p>An XML processor may choose to completely expand entities before the
021 * structure model is passed to the DOM; in this case there will be no
022 * <code>EntityReference</code> nodes in the document tree.
023 * <p>XML does not mandate that a non-validating XML processor read and
024 * process entity declarations made in the external subset or declared in
025 * parameter entities. This means that parsed entities declared in the
026 * external subset need not be expanded by some classes of applications, and
027 * that the replacement text of the entity may not be available. When the <a href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xml-20040204#intern-replacement'>
028 * replacement text</a> is available, the corresponding <code>Entity</code> node's child list
029 * represents the structure of that replacement value. Otherwise, the child
030 * list is empty.
031 * <p>DOM Level 3 does not support editing <code>Entity</code> nodes; if a
032 * user wants to make changes to the contents of an <code>Entity</code>,
033 * every related <code>EntityReference</code> node has to be replaced in the
034 * structure model by a clone of the <code>Entity</code>'s contents, and
035 * then the desired changes must be made to each of those clones instead.
036 * <code>Entity</code> nodes and all their descendants are readonly.
037 * <p>An <code>Entity</code> node does not have any parent.
038 * <p ><b>Note:</b> If the entity contains an unbound namespace prefix, the
039 * <code>namespaceURI</code> of the corresponding node in the
040 * <code>Entity</code> node subtree is <code>null</code>. The same is true
041 * for <code>EntityReference</code> nodes that refer to this entity, when
042 * they are created using the <code>createEntityReference</code> method of
043 * the <code>Document</code> interface.
044 * <p>See also the <a href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-Core-20040407'>Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification</a>.
045 */
046public interface Entity extends Node {
047    /**
048     * The public identifier associated with the entity if specified, and
049     * <code>null</code> otherwise.
050     */
051    public String getPublicId();
052
053    /**
054     * The system identifier associated with the entity if specified, and
055     * <code>null</code> otherwise. This may be an absolute URI or not.
056     */
057    public String getSystemId();
058
059    /**
060     * For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the entity. For
061     * parsed entities, this is <code>null</code>.
062     */
063    public String getNotationName();
064
065    /**
066     * An attribute specifying the encoding used for this entity at the time
067     * of parsing, when it is an external parsed entity. This is
068     * <code>null</code> if it an entity from the internal subset or if it
069     * is not known.
070     * @since DOM Level 3
071     */
072    public String getInputEncoding();
073
074    /**
075     * An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the encoding
076     * of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is
077     * <code>null</code> otherwise.
078     * @since DOM Level 3
079     */
080    public String getXmlEncoding();
081
082    /**
083     * An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the version
084     * number of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is
085     * <code>null</code> otherwise.
086     * @since DOM Level 3
087     */
088    public String getXmlVersion();
089
090}