src/org/w3c/dom/traversal/NodeFilter.java

/*
 * Copyright (c) 2000 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.traversal;

import org.w3c.dom.Node;

/**
 *  Filters are objects that know how to "filter out" nodes. If a
 * <code>NodeIterator</code> or <code>TreeWalker</code> is given a filter, it 
 * applies the filter before it returns the next node. If the filter says to 
 * accept the node, the iterator returns it; otherwise, the iterator looks 
 * for the next node and pretends that the node that was rejected was not 
 * there.
 * <p> The DOM does not provide any filters. Filter is just an interface that 
 * users can implement to provide their own filters. 
 * <p> Filters do not need to know how to iterate, nor do they need to know 
 * anything about the data structure that is being iterated. This makes it 
 * very easy to write filters, since the only thing they have to know how to 
 * do is evaluate a single node. One filter may be used with a number of 
 * different kinds of iterators, encouraging code reuse. This is an 
 * ECMAScript function reference. This method returns a<code>short</code> . 
 * The parameter is of type <code>Node</code> . 
 * @since DOM Level 2
 */
public interface NodeFilter {
    // Constants returned by acceptNode
    public static final short FILTER_ACCEPT             = 1;
    public static final short FILTER_REJECT             = 2;
    public static final short FILTER_SKIP               = 3;

    // Constants for whatToShow
    public static final int SHOW_ALL                  = 0xFFFFFFFF;
    public static final int SHOW_ELEMENT              = 0x00000001;
    public static final int SHOW_ATTRIBUTE            = 0x00000002;
    public static final int SHOW_TEXT                 = 0x00000004;
    public static final int SHOW_CDATA_SECTION        = 0x00000008;
    public static final int SHOW_ENTITY_REFERENCE     = 0x00000010;
    public static final int SHOW_ENTITY               = 0x00000020;
    public static final int SHOW_PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION = 0x00000040;
    public static final int SHOW_COMMENT              = 0x00000080;
    public static final int SHOW_DOCUMENT             = 0x00000100;
    public static final int SHOW_DOCUMENT_TYPE        = 0x00000200;
    public static final int SHOW_DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT    = 0x00000400;
    public static final int SHOW_NOTATION             = 0x00000800;

    /**
     *  Test whether a specified node is visible in the logical view of a 
     * TreeWalker or NodeIterator. This function will be called by the 
     * implementation of TreeWalker and NodeIterator; it is not intended to 
     * be called directly from user code.
     * @param n  The node to check to see if it passes the filter or not.
     * @return  a constant to determine whether the node is accepted, 
     *   rejected, or skipped, as defined  above .
     */
    public short acceptNode(Node n);

}