Node.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */
package javax.xml.soap;

/**
 * A representation of a node (element) in a DOM representation of an XML document that provides
 * some tree manipulation methods. This interface provides methods for getting the value of a node,
 * for getting and setting the parent of a node, and for removing a node.
 */
public interface Node extends org.w3c.dom.Node {

    /**
     * Returns the the value of the immediate child of this <code>Node</code> object if a child
     * exists and its value is text.
     *
     * @return a <code>String</code> with the text of the immediate child of this <code>Node</code>
     *         object if (1) there is a child and (2) the child is a <code>Text</code> object;
     *         <code>null</code> otherwise
     */
    public abstract String getValue();

    /**
     * Sets the parent of this <code>Node</code> object to the given <code>SOAPElement</code>
     * object.
     *
     * @param parent the <code>SOAPElement</code> object to be set as the parent of this
     *               <code>Node</code> object
     * @throws SOAPException if there is a problem in setting the parent to the given element
     * @see #getParentElement() getParentElement()
     */
    public abstract void setParentElement(SOAPElement parent)
            throws SOAPException;

    /**
     * Returns the parent element of this <code>Node</code> object. This method can throw an
     * <code>UnsupportedOperationException</code> if the tree is not kept in memory.
     *
     * @return the <code>SOAPElement</code> object that is the parent of this <code>Node</code>
     *         object or <code>null</code> if this <code>Node</code> object is root
     * @throws UnsupportedOperationException
     *          if the whole tree is not kept in memory
     * @see #setParentElement(SOAPElement) setParentElement(javax.xml.soap.SOAPElement)
     */
    public abstract SOAPElement getParentElement();

    /**
     * Removes this <code>Node</code> object from the tree. Once removed, this node can be garbage
     * collected if there are no application references to it.
     */
    public abstract void detachNode();

    /**
     * Notifies the implementation that this <code>Node</code> object is no longer being used by the
     * application and that the implementation is free to reuse this object for nodes that may be
     * created later.
     * <p/>
     * Calling the method <code>recycleNode</code> implies that the method <code>detachNode</code>
     * has been called previously.
     */
    public abstract void recycleNode();

    /**
     * If this is a Text node then this method will set its value, otherwise it sets the value of
     * the immediate (Text) child of this node. The value of the immediate child of this node can be
     * set only if, there is one child node and that node is a Text node, or if there are no
     * children in which case a child Text node will be created.
     *
     * @param value the text to set
     * @throws IllegalStateException if the node is not a Text  node and either has more than one
     *                               child node or has a child node that is not a Text node
     */

    public abstract void setValue(String value);
}