The
Attr
interface represents an attribute in an
Element
object. Typically the allowable values for the attribute are defined in a document type definition.
Attr
objects inherit the Node
interface, but since they are not actually child nodes of the element they describe, the DOM does not consider them part of the document tree. Thus, the Node
attributes parentNode
, previousSibling
, and nextSibling
have a null
value for Attr
objects. The DOM takes the view that attributes are properties of elements rather than having a separate identity from the elements they are associated with; this should make it more efficient to implement such features as default attributes associated with all elements of a given type. Furthermore, Attr
nodes may not be immediate children of a DocumentFragment
. However, they can be associated with Element
nodes contained within a DocumentFragment
. In short, users and implementors of the DOM need to be aware that Attr
nodes have some things in common with other objects inheriting the Node
interface, but they also are quite distinct.
The attribute's effective value is determined as follows: if this attribute has been explicitly assigned any value, that value is the attribute's effective value; otherwise, if there is a declaration for this attribute, and that declaration includes a default value, then that default value is the attribute's effective value; otherwise, the attribute does not exist on this element in the structure model until it has been explicitly added. Note that the nodeValue
attribute on the Attr
instance can also be used to retrieve the string version of the attribute's value(s).
In XML, where the value of an attribute can contain entity references, the child nodes of the Attr
node provide a representation in which entity references are not expanded. These child nodes may be either Text
or EntityReference
nodes. Because the attribute type may be unknown, there are no tokenized attribute values.