# Interface Characters

All Superinterfaces:
  `XMLEvent, XMLStreamConstants`

public interface Characters extends XMLEvent
This describes the interface to Characters events. All text events get reported as Characters events. Content, CData and whitespace are all reported as Characters events. IgnorableWhitespace, in most cases, will be set to false unless an element declaration of element content is present for the current element.

Since:
  1.6

## Field Summary

### Fields declared in interface XMLStreamConstants

`ATTRIBUTE, CDATA, CHARACTERS, COMMENT, DTD, END_DOCUMENT, END_ELEMENT, ENTITY_DECLARATION, ENTITY_REFERENCE, NAMESPACE, NOTATION_DECLARATION, PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION, SPACE, START_DOCUMENT, START_ELEMENT`

## Method Summary

Modifier and Type
Method
Description
`String`
`getData()`
Get the character data of this event
`boolean`
`isCData()`
Returns true if this is a CData section.
`boolean`
`isIgnorableWhiteSpace()`
Return true if this is ignorableWhiteSpace.
`boolean`
`isWhiteSpace()`
Returns true if this set of Characters is all whitespace.

### Methods declared in interface XMLEvent

`asCharacters, asEndElement, asStartElement, getEventType, getLocation, getSchemaType, isAttribute, isCharacters, isEndDocument, isEndElement, isEntityReference, isNamespace, isProcessingInstruction, isStartDocument, isStartElement, writeAsEncodedUnicode`

## Method Details

### getData

String getData()
Get the character data of this event

Returns:
  the character data

### isWhiteSpace

boolean isWhiteSpace()
Returns true if this set of Characters is all whitespace. Whitespace inside a document is reported as CHARACTERS. This method allows checking of CHARACTERS events to see if they are composed of only whitespace characters

Returns:
  true if the `Characters` are all whitespace, false otherwise

### isCData

boolean isCData()
Returns true if this is a CData section. If this event is CData its event type will be CDATA If javax.xml.stream.isCoalescing is set to true CDATA Sections that are surrounded by non CDATA characters will be reported as a single Characters event. This method will return false in this case.

Returns:
  true if it is `CDATA`, false otherwise

### isIgnorableWhiteSpace

boolean isIgnorableWhiteSpace()
Return true if this is ignorableWhiteSpace. If this event is ignorableWhiteSpace its event type will be SPACE.

Returns:
  true if it is ignorable whitespace, false otherwise