/*
 * 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;
import org.w3c.dom.DOMException;

/**
 * <code>NodeIterators</code> are used to step through a set of nodes, e.g. 
 * the set of nodes in a <code>NodeList</code>, the document subtree 
 * governed by a particular <code>Node</code>, the results of a query, or 
 * any other set of nodes. The set of nodes to be iterated is determined by 
 * the implementation of the <code>NodeIterator</code>. DOM Level 2 
 * specifies a single <code>NodeIterator</code> implementation for 
 * document-order traversal of a document subtree. Instances of these 
 * <code>NodeIterators</code> are created by calling 
 * <code>DocumentTraversal</code><code>.createNodeIterator()</code>.
 * <p>See also the <a href='http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Traversal-Range-20001113'>Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Traversal and Range Specification</a>.
 * @since DOM Level 2
 */
public interface NodeIterator {
    /**
     * The root node of the <code>NodeIterator</code>, as specified when it 
     * was created.
     */
    public Node getRoot();

    /**
     * This attribute determines which node types are presented via the 
     * <code>NodeIterator</code>. The available set of constants is defined 
     * in the <code>NodeFilter</code> interface.  Nodes not accepted by 
     * <code>whatToShow</code> will be skipped, but their children may still 
     * be considered. Note that this skip takes precedence over the filter, 
     * if any. 
     */
    public int getWhatToShow();

    /**
     * The <code>NodeFilter</code> used to screen nodes.
     */
    public NodeFilter getFilter();

    /**
     *  The value of this flag determines whether the children of entity 
     * reference nodes are visible to the <code>NodeIterator</code>. If 
     * false, these children  and their descendants will be rejected. Note 
     * that this rejection takes precedence over <code>whatToShow</code> and 
     * the filter. Also note that this is currently the only situation where 
     * <code>NodeIterators</code> may reject a complete subtree rather than 
     * skipping individual nodes. 
     * <br>
     * <br> To produce a view of the document that has entity references 
     * expanded and does not expose the entity reference node itself, use 
     * the <code>whatToShow</code> flags to hide the entity reference node 
     * and set <code>expandEntityReferences</code> to true when creating the 
     * <code>NodeIterator</code>. To produce a view of the document that has 
     * entity reference nodes but no entity expansion, use the 
     * <code>whatToShow</code> flags to show the entity reference node and 
     * set <code>expandEntityReferences</code> to false.
     */
    public boolean getExpandEntityReferences();

    /**
     * Returns the next node in the set and advances the position of the 
     * <code>NodeIterator</code> in the set. After a 
     * <code>NodeIterator</code> is created, the first call to 
     * <code>nextNode()</code> returns the first node in the set.
     * @return The next <code>Node</code> in the set being iterated over, or 
     *   <code>null</code> if there are no more members in that set.
     * @exception DOMException
     *   INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if this method is called after the 
     *   <code>detach</code> method was invoked.
     */
    public Node nextNode()
                         throws DOMException;

    /**
     * Returns the previous node in the set and moves the position of the 
     * <code>NodeIterator</code> backwards in the set.
     * @return The previous <code>Node</code> in the set being iterated over, 
     *   or <code>null</code> if there are no more members in that set. 
     * @exception DOMException
     *   INVALID_STATE_ERR: Raised if this method is called after the 
     *   <code>detach</code> method was invoked.
     */
    public Node previousNode()
                             throws DOMException;

    /**
     * Detaches the <code>NodeIterator</code> from the set which it iterated 
     * over, releasing any computational resources and placing the 
     * <code>NodeIterator</code> in the INVALID state. After 
     * <code>detach</code> has been invoked, calls to <code>nextNode</code> 
     * or <code>previousNode</code> will raise the exception 
     * INVALID_STATE_ERR.
     */
    public void detach();

}