NAME

       XML::DOM::Element - An XML element node in XML::DOM

DESCRIPTION

       XML::DOM::Element extends XML::DOM::Node.

       By far the vast majority of objects (apart from text) that authors encounter when
       traversing a document are Element nodes. Assume the following XML document:

            <elementExample id="demo">
              <subelement1/>
              <subelement2><subsubelement/></subelement2>
            </elementExample>

       When represented using DOM, the top node is an Element node for "elementExample", which
       contains two child Element nodes, one for "subelement1" and one for "subelement2".
       "subelement1" contains no child nodes.

       Elements may have attributes associated with them; since the Element interface inherits
       from Node, the generic Node interface method getAttributes may be used to retrieve the set
       of all attributes for an element. There are methods on the Element interface to retrieve
       either an Attr object by name or an attribute value by name. In XML, where an attribute
       value may contain entity references, an Attr object should be retrieved to examine the
       possibly fairly complex sub-tree representing the attribute value. On the other hand, in
       HTML, where all attributes have simple string values, methods to directly access an
       attribute value can safely be used as a convenience.

       METHODS

       getTagName
           The name of the element. For example, in:

                          <elementExample id="demo">
                                  ...
                          </elementExample>

           tagName has the value "elementExample". Note that this is case-preserving in XML, as
           are all of the operations of the DOM.

       getAttribute (name)
           Retrieves an attribute value by name.

           Return Value: The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if that attribute does
           not have a specified or default value.

       setAttribute (name, value)
           Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that name is already present in the
           element, its value is changed to be that of the value parameter. This value is a
           simple string, it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as syntax to
           be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be
           appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is written out. In order to assign
           an attribute value that contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node
           plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use
           setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.

           DOMExceptions:

           * INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
               Raised if the specified name contains an invalid character.

           * NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
               Raised if this node is readonly.

       removeAttribute (name)
           Removes an attribute by name. If the removed attribute has a default value it is
           immediately replaced.

           DOMExceptions:

           * NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
               Raised if this node is readonly.

       getAttributeNode
           Retrieves an Attr node by name.

           Return Value: The Attr node with the specified attribute name or undef if there is no
           such attribute.

       setAttributeNode (attr)
           Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that name is already present in the
           element, it is replaced by the new one.

           Return Value: If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute with the same
           name, the previously existing Attr node is returned, otherwise undef is returned.

           DOMExceptions:

           * WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR
               Raised if newAttr was created from a different document than the one that created
               the element.

           * NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
               Raised if this node is readonly.

           * INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR
               Raised if newAttr is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user
               must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

       removeAttributeNode (oldAttr)
           Removes the specified attribute. If the removed Attr has a default value it is
           immediately replaced. If the Attr already is the default value, nothing happens and
           nothing is returned.

           Parameters:
            oldAttr  The Attr node to remove from the attribute list.

           Return Value: The Attr node that was removed.

           DOMExceptions:

           * NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
               Raised if this node is readonly.

           * NOT_FOUND_ERR
               Raised if oldAttr is not an attribute of the element.

           Additional methods not in the DOM Spec

           setTagName (newTagName)
               Sets the tag name of the Element. Note that this method is not portable between
               DOM implementations.

               DOMExceptions:

               * INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR
                   Raised if the specified name contains an invalid character.

           check ($checker)
               Uses the specified XML::Checker to validate the document.  NOTE: an XML::Checker
               must be supplied. The checker can be created in different ways, e.g. when parsing
               a document with XML::DOM::ValParser, or with XML::DOM::Document::createChecker().
               See XML::Checker for more info.