public  void accept(Visitor visitor)

accept is the method used in the Visitor Pattern.

 public String asXML()

asXML returns the textual XML representation of this node.

 public Node asXPathResult(Element parent)

asXPathResult returns a version of this node which is
capable of being an XPath result. The result of an XPath expression
should always support the parent relationship, whether the original XML
tree was singly or doubly linked. If the node does not support the parent
relationship then a new node will be created which is linked to its
parent and returned.

 public Object clone()

clone will return a deep clone or if this node is
read-only then clone will return the same instance.

 public XPath createXPath(String xpathExpression) throws InvalidXPathException

createXPath creates an XPath object for the given
xpathExpression. The XPath object allows the variable context to be
specified.

 public Node detach()

Removes this node from its parent if there is one. If this node is the
root element of a document then it is removed from the document as well.



This method is useful if you want to remove a node from its source
document and add it to another document. For example

 Node node = ...; Element someOtherElement = ...;
someOtherElement.add( node.detach() ); 

 public Document getDocument()

getDocument returns the Document that this
Node is part of if this node supports the parent
relationship.



This method is an optional feature and may not be supported for all
Node implementations.

 public String getName()

getName returns the name of this node. This is the XML
local name of the element, attribute, entity or processing instruction.
For CDATA and Text nodes this method will return null.

 public short getNodeType()
Returns the code according to the type of node. This makes processing
nodes polymorphically much easier as the switch statement can be used
instead of multiple if (instanceof) statements.

 public String getNodeTypeName()
DOCUMENT ME!

 public Element getParent()

getParent returns the parent Element if
this node supports the parent relationship or null if it is the root
element or does not support the parent relationship.



This method is an optional feature and may not be supported for all
Node implementations.

 public String getPath()

Returns the XPath expression which will return a node set containing the
given node such as /a/b/@c. No indexing will be used to restrict the
path if multiple elements with the same name occur on the path.

 public String getPath(Element context)
Returns the relative XPath expression which will return a node set
containing the given node such as a/b/@c. No indexing will be used to
restrict the path if multiple elements with the same name occur on the
path.

 public String getStringValue()
Returns the XPath string-value of this node. The behaviour of this method
is defined in the XPath
specification .

 public String getText()

Returns the text of this node.

 public String getUniquePath()

Returns the XPath expression which will return a nodeset of one node
which is the current node. This method will use the XPath index operator
to restrict the path if multiple elements with the same name occur on the
path.

 public String getUniquePath(Element context)

Returns the relative unique XPath expression from the given context which
will return a nodeset of one node which is the current node. This method
will use the XPath index operator to restrict the path if multiple
elements with the same name occur on the path.

 public boolean hasContent()

hasContent returns true if this node is a Branch (either
an Element or a Document) and it contains at least one content node such
as a child Element or Text node.

 public boolean isReadOnly()

isReadOnly returns true if this node is read only and
cannot be modified. Any attempt to modify a read-only Node
will result in an UnsupportedOperationException being
thrown.

 public boolean matches(String xpathExpression)

matches returns true if evaluating the given XPath
expression on this node returns a non-empty node set containing this
node.



This method does not behave like the <xsl:if> element - if you want
that behaviour, to evaluate if an XPath expression matches something,
then you can use the following code to be equivalent...

if ( node.selectSingleNode( "/some/path" ) != nulll )

 public Number numberValueOf(String xpathExpression)

numberValueOf evaluates an XPath expression and returns
the numeric value of the XPath expression if the XPath expression results
in a number, or null if the result is not a number.

 public List selectNodes(String xpathExpression)

selectNodes evaluates an XPath expression and returns the
result as a List of Node instances or
String instances depending on the XPath expression.

 public List selectNodes(String xpathExpression,
    String comparisonXPathExpression)

selectNodes evaluates an XPath expression then sorts the
results using a secondary XPath expression Returns a sorted
List of Node instances.

 public List selectNodes(String xpathExpression,
    String comparisonXPathExpression,
    boolean removeDuplicates)

selectNodes evaluates an XPath expression then sorts the
results using a secondary XPath expression Returns a sorted
List of Node instances.

 public Object selectObject(String xpathExpression)

selectObject evaluates an XPath expression and returns the
result as an Object . The object returned can either be a List  of one or more Node instances or a scalar object like a
String or a Number instance depending on the XPath
expression.

 public Node selectSingleNode(String xpathExpression)

selectSingleNode evaluates an XPath expression and returns
the result as a single Node instance.

 public  void setDocument(Document document)

setDocument sets the document of this node if the parent
relationship is supported or does nothing if the parent relationship is
not supported.



This method should only be called from inside a Document
implementation method and is not intended for general use.

 public  void setName(String name)

Sets the text data of this node or this method will throw an
UnsupportedOperationException if it is read-only.

 public  void setParent(Element parent)

setParent sets the parent relationship of this node if the
parent relationship is supported or does nothing if the parent
relationship is not supported.



This method should only be called from inside an Element
implementation method and is not intended for general use.

 public  void setText(String text)

Sets the text data of this node or this method will throw an
UnsupportedOperationException if it is read-only.

 public boolean supportsParent()

supportsParent returns true if this node supports the
parent relationship.



Some XML tree implementations are singly linked and only support downward
navigation through children relationships. The default case is that both
parent and children relationships are supported though for memory and
performance reasons the parent relationship may not be supported.

 public String valueOf(String xpathExpression)

valueOf evaluates an XPath expression and returns the
textual representation of the results the XPath string-value of this
node. The string-value for a given node type is defined in the XPath specification .

 public  void write(Writer writer) throws IOException

write writes this node as the default XML notation for
this node. If you wish to control the XML output (such as for pretty
printing, changing the indentation policy etc.) then please use org.dom4j.io.XMLWriter  or its derivations.