Using DOM 3.0 Validation Techniques with XDK 10g : Page 3

The getAllowedChildren() Method
The getAllowedChildren() method returns a list of elements allowed in an element, providing another way to determine whether adding an element would be a valid action. As an example, here's how to output the elements which can be added to the article element.

   XMLElement articleNode = (XMLElement) 
      (document.selectSingleNode(
      "catalog/journal/article"));
   ElementEditVAL articleVAL = (ElementEditVAL) 
      (articleNode);
   elementList=articleVAL.getAllowedChildren();

After running the preceding code, you'll find that the elementList return value contains two elements: author and title.

The getContentType() Method
The getContentType() method returns the content type an element is allowed to have. For example, this code retrieves the valid content type for an article element:

   short contentType=articleVAL.getContentType();

If the value of the short variable returned by the getContentType() method is VAL_ANY_CONTENTTYPE, the element content is element, processing instruction, unexpanded entity reference, character, and comment information items.

The return value is a short that represents the valid content type as shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Content Types: The table shows valid content type short values.

Short Value	Valid Element Content Type
VAL_ELEMENTS_CONTENTTYPE	A sequence of elements
VAL_EMPTY_CONTENTTYPE	Empty
VAL_MIXED_CONTENTTYPE	A sequence of ordered elements with optional character data
VAL_SIMPLE_CONTENTTYPE	Character data

For the article element, getContentType() returns VAL_ELEMENTS_CONTENTTYPE—in other words, the article element can contain a sequence of elements.

The nodeValidity() method checks the validity of a node. As an example, checking the validity of an article node with the following code returns VALID_TRUE.

   short nodeValid = articleVAL.nodeValidity(
      ElementEditVAL.VAL_SCHEMA);

The getAllowedAttributes() Method
The getAllowedAttributes() method returns a list of allowed attributes for an element. For example, to discover the allowable attributes for the catalog element, you can write:

   NameList attr = elementEditVAL.getAllowedAttributes();

After running the preceding validation code, the attr NameList contains two attributes: title and publisher.

The getRequiredAttributes() Method
The getRequiredAttributes() method returns a list of required attributes for an element, letting you know in advance which attributes you'll need to add to an element to insert or append it into a valid document. In an XML schema, you specify a required attribute using the use="required" syntax. For example, to get the required attributes in the catalog element, you can use:

   NameList attrRequired = 
      elementEditVAL.getRequiredAttributes();

After running the preceding line of code, for the sample documents, the attrRequired NameList would contain publisher, because that's the only catalog element attribute specified with use="required" in the sample schema.

The canSetAttribute() Method
The canSetAttribute() method checks the validity of adding an attribute to an element. As an example, try adding a section attribute to the catalog element.

   short attrSet = elementEditVAL.canSetAttribute(
      "section", "SQL");

Because the catalog.xsd schema does not define a section attribute for the catalog element the result is VALID_FALSE.

The canRemoveAttribute() Method
The canRemoveAttribute() checks the validity of removing an attribute from an element. As an example, try removing the publisher element from the catalog element. The publisher attribute is a required attribute of element catalog, so the return value is VALID_FALSE.

The methods you've seen in this article cover DOM Level 3.0 validation, letting you test whether you can add or remove elements and attributes from an XML document according to a given schema. The downloadable example validation program, DOM3Validation.java works with the two sample catalog.xml and catalog.xsd files to illustrate the methods. After you download the code, copy the DOM3Validation.java file to the same directory as catalog.xml.

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