Bug 249114 – Remove non-standard Range.compareNode()

• Status: NEW
• Component: DOM

[Ahmad Saleem]

Hi Team,

While going through Blink commit's, I came across another non-standard, which is now only present in Webkit from quick Github search:

e.g., https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/bf6ec0b71883ada1ee6d8d0c66a8ea7e421c5e27/Source/WebCore/dom/Range.idl#L68 & https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/bf6ec0b71883ada1ee6d8d0c66a8ea7e421c5e27/Source/WebCore/dom/Range.cpp#L187

Blink Commit - https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/blink/+/9cec195ebb459d3ebdc7ef91a6336047c07ae5b7

Intent to Remove Thread - https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/5dNJaHFNFGM

Some background: Added in 2006 - https://trac.webkit.org/changeset/16302/webkit

MDN - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/range/compareNode (Removed from Firefox in 1.9)

Web-Spec - https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#interface-range

Just wanted to raise bug to track it for discussion or for future tracking.

Thanks!

[Ryosuke Niwa]

A quick GitHub search finds quite a few entries:
https://github.com/search?q=Range.compareNode+language%3AJavaScript&type=code&l=JavaScript

I don't think it's safe to remove this API.

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/103499504>

[Karl Dubost]

https://searchfox.org/wubkat/rev/36d40c7dfd972e688c9c0febea6821825a85d6ac/Source/WebCore/dom/Range.cpp#207-239
```cpp
ExceptionOr<Range::CompareResults> Range::compareNode(Node& node) const
{
    // FIXME: This deprecated function should be removed.
    // We originally added it for interoperability with Firefox.
    // Recent versions of Firefox have removed it.

    // http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/DOM:range.compareNode
    // This method returns 0, 1, 2, or 3 based on if the node is before, after,
    // before and after(surrounds), or inside the range, respectively.

    if (!node.isConnected() || &node.document() != m_ownerDocument.ptr()) {
        // Match historical Firefox behavior.
        return NODE_BEFORE;
    }

    auto nodeRange = makeRangeSelectingNode(node);
    if (!nodeRange) {
        // Match historical Firefox behavior.
        return Exception { ExceptionCode::NotFoundError };
    }

    auto startOrdering = treeOrder(nodeRange->start, makeBoundaryPoint(m_start));
    auto endOrdering = treeOrder(nodeRange->end, makeBoundaryPoint(m_end));
    if (is_gteq(startOrdering) && is_lteq(endOrdering))
        return NODE_INSIDE;
    if (is_lteq(startOrdering) && is_gteq(endOrdering))
        return NODE_BEFORE_AND_AFTER;
    if (is_lteq(startOrdering))
        return NODE_BEFORE;
    if (is_gteq(endOrdering))
        return NODE_AFTER;
    return Exception { ExceptionCode::WrongDocumentError };
}
```

[Karl Dubost]

I see 84 instances on GitHub
https://github.com/search?q=Range.compareNode+language%3AJavaScript&type=code&l=JavaScript

BUT but most of them have this pattern:

```
range.compareNode(editableHost) !== range.NODE_BEFORE_AND_AFTER
```

which comes from a  DEPRECATED library 
https://github.com/Fixxpunkt/editable.js/

They link 
editable.js ⛔ [DEPRECATED] Active at https://github.com/Fixxpunkt/sto/
Which is itself dead.

The fork was from 
https://github.com/search?q=repo%3AlivingdocsIO%2Feditable.js%20compareNode&type=code

which contains no compareNode hit. 

Another one which has been archived
https://github.com/wymeditor/wymeditor

[Ahmad Saleem]

Pull request: https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/pull/38385