/*
 * GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Copyright (C) 2006 The Lobo Project
 * 
 * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
 * the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free
 * Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option)
 * any later version.
 * 
 * This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
 * ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
 * FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more
 * details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
 * along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
 * 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
 * 
 * Contact info: xamjadmin@users.sourceforge.net
 */
/*
 * Copyright (c) 2003 World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of
 * Technology, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique,
 * Keio University). All Rights Reserved. This program is distributed under the
 * W3C's Software Intellectual Property License. This program is distributed in
 * the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
 * implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See
 * W3C License http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ for more details.
 */

package org.w3c.dom.html2;

import org.w3c.dom.DOMException;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;

/**
 * An <code>HTMLOptionsCollection</code> is a list of nodes representing HTML
 * option element. An individual node may be accessed by either ordinal index or
 * the node's <code>name</code> or <code>id</code> attributes. Collections in
 * the HTML DOM are assumed to be live meaning that they are automatically
 * updated when the underlying document is changed.
 * <p>
 * See also the <a
 * href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-DOM-Level-2-HTML-20030109'>Document
 * Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Specification</a>.
 * 
 * @since DOM Level 2
 */
public interface HTMLOptionsCollection {

	/**
	 * This attribute specifies the length or size of the list.
	 */
	public int getLength();

	/**
	 * This method retrieves a node specified by ordinal index. Nodes are
	 * numbered in tree order (depth-first traversal order).
	 * 
	 * @param index
	 *            The index of the node to be fetched. The index origin is 0.
	 * @return The <code>Node</code> at the corresponding position upon success.
	 *         A value of <code>null</code> is returned if the index is out of
	 *         range.
	 */
	public Node item(int index);

	/**
	 * This method retrieves a <code>Node</code> using a name. It first searches
	 * for a <code>Node</code> with a matching <code>id</code> attribute. If it
	 * doesn't find one, it then searches for a <code>Node</code> with a
	 * matching <code>name</code> attribute, but only on those elements that are
	 * allowed a name attribute. This method is case insensitive in HTML
	 * documents and case sensitive in XHTML documents.
	 * 
	 * @param name
	 *            The name of the <code>Node</code> to be fetched.
	 * @return The <code>Node</code> with a <code>name</code> or <code>id</code>
	 *         attribute whose value corresponds to the specified string. Upon
	 *         failure (e.g., no node with this name exists), returns
	 *         <code>null</code>.
	 */
	public Node namedItem(String name);

	/**
	 * This attribute specifies the length or size of the list.
	 * 
	 * @exception DOMException
	 *                NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR: if setting the length is not allowed by
	 *                the implementation.
	 */
	public void setLength(int length) throws DOMException;

}