childNodes of type NodeList, readonly: A NodeList that contains all children of this node, in document order. If there are no children, this is a NodeList containing no nodes.

live: refers to objects in which changes to the underlying document structure are reflected immediately and automatically. For example, if a DOM user gets a NodeList object containing the children of an Element, then subsequently adds more children to that element (or removes or modifies one or more of the children), those changes are automatically reflected in the NodeList, without further action on the user's part. Likewise, changes to a Node in the tree are reflected in all references to that Node in NodeList and NamedNodeMap objects.
static: refers to objects which do not change in response to the alterations in the underlying document structure. For example, if a DOM user has a StaticNodeList object containing the children of an Element, then subsequently adds more children to that element, those new children will not have references in the existing StaticNodeList object. For elements that are members of a static object, but have been removed from the document (such as with the removeChild or replaceChild methods), the element must remain in the static object (though it will not have the same parentNode or siblingNodes), and operations may performed on that element, such as changing its attribute values, or reinserting into the document; obviously, any changes to an element not currently in the document will not be reflected in the document until that element is inserted into the document.

The StaticNodeList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of nodes, without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. StaticNodeList objects in the DOM are 'static'.

The items in the StaticNodeList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.

IDL Definition

interface StaticNodeList {
  Node               item(in unsigned long index);
  readonly attribute unsigned long   length;
};

Attributes

length of type unsigned long, readonly: The number of nodes in the list. The range of valid child node indices is 0 to length-1 inclusive.

Methods

item

Returns the indexth item in the collection. If index is greater than or equal to the number of nodes in the list, this returns null.

Parameters

index of type unsigned long: Index into the collection.

Return Value

Node

The node at the indexth position in the StaticNodeList, or null if that is not a valid index.

No Exceptions

@@ISSUE: Raised by Cameron McCormack: if you have a static node list, why not just declare it as a sequence in the IDL, then have that map to an array in the language bindings? That would give it all the methods available to arrays

Interface NodeList

The NodeList interface provides the abstraction of an ordered collection of nodes, without defining or constraining how this collection is implemented. The ordering of the nodes must be defined by the target method or attribute. NodeList objects in the DOM may be 'live' or 'static', which must be specified in the target method or attribute.

The items in the NodeList are accessible via an integral index, starting from 0.