Issue about using getInterface()

Two issues:

1) In quite a few of the specifications, there is talk about using the getInterface of either DOMImplementation or Node as a mechanism to get access to the specialized API's. I think this is a great solution over the previous 'binding-specific casting method', that was completely different for every implementation.

However, the problem I see is that the current specifications specialized API's do NOT inherit from DOMImplementation or Node. This puts us exactly back into the 'binding-specific casting method' world. In which case, there's no point in having the getInterface method.

For example, in the Load & Save spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-DOM-Level-3-LS-20020725/load-save.html), the inteface DocumentLS is defined as:

interface DocumentLS {
	...
};

and the statement is made: 
---
The expectation is that an instance of the DocumentLS interface can be obtained by using binding-specific casting methods on an instance of the Document interface or, if the Document supports the feature "Core" version "3.0" defined in [DOM Level 3 Core], by using the method Node.getInterface with parameter values "LS-Load" and "3.0" (respectively).
---

Therefore, if I want to use the Node.getInterface("LS-Load", "3.0") to get a DocumentLS, the object I get back must implement Node as well as DocumentLS. Otherwise, I need a 'binding-specific casting method' for this to work. I believe that the expected code would look like:

{
Document	myDocument;
DocumentLS	myDocumentLS;

	// myDocument filled out via normal DOM calls

	myDocumentLS = (DocumentLS)myDocument.getInterface("LS-Load", "3.0");
	myDocumentLS.abort();
}

However, if 'DocumentLS' does NOT inherit from Node, this is going to throw an exception in Java and crash in VB and C++.

This problem occurs in many places, but a few places that I've noticed are:
Load & Save: DOMImplementionLS and DocumentLS
Events: EventTarget
XPath: XPathEvaluator

2) The getInterface method is defined as only taking a feature parameter. However, most of the other specifications refer to the getInterface method as if it takes both a feature and a version parameter. I would prefer that the getInterface be updated to take both a feature and a version so that it is similar to isSupported.

Michael Mansell, 
Senior Product Architect
PureEdge Solutions
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Received on Monday, 25 November 2002 18:24:19 UTC