1/*
2 * Copyright (c) 2004 World Wide Web Consortium,
3 *
4 * (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for
5 * Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved. This
6 * work is distributed under the W3C(r) Software License [1] in the hope that
7 * it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
8 * warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
9 *
10 * [1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231
11 */
12
13package org.w3c.dom;
14
15/**
16 * This interface represents a known entity, either parsed or unparsed, in an
17 * XML document. Note that this models the entity itself <em>not</em> the entity declaration.
18 * <p>The <code>nodeName</code> attribute that is inherited from
19 * <code>Node</code> contains the name of the entity.
20 * <p>An XML processor may choose to completely expand entities before the
21 * structure model is passed to the DOM; in this case there will be no
22 * <code>EntityReference</code> nodes in the document tree.
23 * <p>XML does not mandate that a non-validating XML processor read and
24 * process entity declarations made in the external subset or declared in
25 * parameter entities. This means that parsed entities declared in the
26 * external subset need not be expanded by some classes of applications, and
27 * 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'>
28 * replacement text</a> is available, the corresponding <code>Entity</code> node's child list
29 * represents the structure of that replacement value. Otherwise, the child
30 * list is empty.
31 * <p>DOM Level 3 does not support editing <code>Entity</code> nodes; if a
32 * user wants to make changes to the contents of an <code>Entity</code>,
33 * every related <code>EntityReference</code> node has to be replaced in the
34 * structure model by a clone of the <code>Entity</code>'s contents, and
35 * then the desired changes must be made to each of those clones instead.
36 * <code>Entity</code> nodes and all their descendants are readonly.
37 * <p>An <code>Entity</code> node does not have any parent.
38 * <p ><b>Note:</b> If the entity contains an unbound namespace prefix, the
39 * <code>namespaceURI</code> of the corresponding node in the
40 * <code>Entity</code> node subtree is <code>null</code>. The same is true
41 * for <code>EntityReference</code> nodes that refer to this entity, when
42 * they are created using the <code>createEntityReference</code> method of
43 * the <code>Document</code> interface.
44 * <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>.
45 */
46public interface Entity extends Node {
47    /**
48     * The public identifier associated with the entity if specified, and
49     * <code>null</code> otherwise.
50     */
51    public String getPublicId();
52
53    /**
54     * The system identifier associated with the entity if specified, and
55     * <code>null</code> otherwise. This may be an absolute URI or not.
56     */
57    public String getSystemId();
58
59    /**
60     * For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the entity. For
61     * parsed entities, this is <code>null</code>.
62     */
63    public String getNotationName();
64
65    /**
66     * An attribute specifying the encoding used for this entity at the time
67     * of parsing, when it is an external parsed entity. This is
68     * <code>null</code> if it an entity from the internal subset or if it
69     * is not known.
70     * @since DOM Level 3
71     */
72    public String getInputEncoding();
73
74    /**
75     * An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the encoding
76     * of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is
77     * <code>null</code> otherwise.
78     * @since DOM Level 3
79     */
80    public String getXmlEncoding();
81
82    /**
83     * An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the version
84     * number of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is
85     * <code>null</code> otherwise.
86     * @since DOM Level 3
87     */
88    public String getXmlVersion();
89
90}
91