The DOM Application Programming Interface

The DOM and the application programming interface (API)

Besides describing a standard object model for HTML, the DOM standard defines an Application Programming Interface (API) to manage this model.

The available functionality of this API is defined as:

A set of abstract interfaces, such as HTMLDocument (describes the behavior of an HTML document behind a web page), HTMLElement (a single instance of a markup element within a document), HTMLCollection (a collection of HTMLElement instances), and others.

These abstract interfaces are implemented in multiple places to support all DOM related operations.