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## org.w3c.dom
Interface DocumentFragment

All Superinterfaces:
  Node

All Known Implementing Classes:
  DomFragment

public interface DocumentFragment
extends Node

`DocumentFragment` is a "lightweight" or "minimal" `Document` object. It is very common to want to be able to extract a portion of a document's tree or to create a new fragment of a document. Imagine implementing a user command like cut or rearranging a document by moving fragments around. It is desirable to have an object which can hold such fragments and it is quite natural to use a Node for this purpose. While it is true that a `Document` object could fulfill this role, a `Document` object can potentially be a heavyweight object, depending on the underlying implementation. What is really needed for this is a very lightweight object. `DocumentFragment` is such an object.

Furthermore, various operations -- such as inserting nodes as children of another `Node` -- may take `DocumentFragment` objects as arguments; this results in all the child nodes of the `DocumentFragment` being moved to the child list of this node.

The children of a `DocumentFragment` node are zero or more nodes representing the tops of any sub-trees defining the structure of the document. `DocumentFragment` nodes do not need to be well-formed XML documents (although they do need to follow the rules imposed upon well-formed XML parsed entities, which can have multiple top nodes). For example, a `DocumentFragment` might have only one child and that child node could be a `Text` node. Such a structure model represents neither an HTML document nor a well-formed XML document.

When a `DocumentFragment` is inserted into a `Document` (or indeed any other `Node` that may take children) the children of the `DocumentFragment` and not the `DocumentFragment` itself are inserted into the `Node`. This makes the `DocumentFragment` very useful when the user wishes to create nodes that are siblings; the `DocumentFragment` acts as the parent of these nodes so that the user can use the standard methods from the `Node` interface, such as `insertBefore` and `appendChild`.

See also the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Specification.

Fields inherited from interface org.w3c.dom.Node
`ATTRIBUTE_NODE, CDATA_SECTION_NODE, COMMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_NODE, DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE, ELEMENT_NODE, ENTITY_NODE, ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE, NOTATION_NODE, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE, TEXT_NODE`

Methods inherited from interface org.w3c.dom.Node
`appendChild, cloneNode, getAttributes, getChildNodes, getFirstChild, getLastChild, getLocalName, getNamespaceURI, getNextSibling, getNodeName, getNodeType, getNodeValue, getOwnerDocument, getParentNode, getPrefix, getPreviousSibling, hasAttributes, hasChildNodes, insertBefore, isSupported, normalize, removeChild, replaceChild, setNodeValue, setPrefix`

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Source code is under GPL (with library exception) in the JAXP project at http://www.gnu.org/software/classpathx/jaxp
This documentation was derived from that source code on 2001-11-20.