Bug 4567 – removed attributes yield null rather than empty string

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: CONFIGURATION CHANGED
• Component: DOM

[Darin Adler]

The W3C DOM test named hc_elementremoveattribute is failing because we return a JavaScript null rather 
than an empty string. This behavior makes sense and matches Firefox. Perhaps the test needs to be 
revised.

[Darin Adler]

Curt, what do you think? Is this a mistake in the test?

[Darin Adler]

Curt, what do you think? Is this a mistake in the test?

[Curt Arnold]

This one is worth pushing up to the DOM IG.  I haven't had time to do a full survey, but this seems to be 
one that the Java implementations pass and the ECMAScript implementations (IE, Mozilla and Safari) fail.  

The descriptions of getAttribute in DOM L1 Core and subsequent do not specify any conditions that 
getAttribute is allowed to return null and the conditions in the test satisify the criteria under which an 
empty string is specified as the return value.

There would seem to be a reasonable case to support an errata allowing null as an acceptible return value 
and modify the test to accept either null or empty string.

[Darin Adler]

Some history. Originally we returned empty string in these cases. Then we had to change to be compatible 
with sites that assumed the behavior of Gecko (and presumably WinIE).

So far the DOM committee does not seem sympathetic about the possibility of creating errata covering 
this.

[Ian 'Hixie' Hickson]

We should fix this in Web DOM Core.

[Lucas Forschler]

Mass moving XML DOM bugs to the "DOM" Component.

[Ahmad Saleem]

From the test case URL - https://www.w3.org/2007/03/dom-tests/hc_elementremoveattribute.html

I am getting following behavior across browsers:

> Firefox Nightly 105:

Test: http://www.w3.org/2001/DOM-Test-Suite/level1/core/hc_elementremoveattribute
    Status: failure
    Detail: attrValue: assertEquals failed, actual null, expected .

> Chrome Canary 106:

Test: http://www.w3.org/2001/DOM-Test-Suite/level1/core/hc_elementremoveattribute
Status: failure
Detail: attrValue: assertEquals failed, actual null, expected .

> Safari 15.6 on macOS 12.5

Test: http://www.w3.org/2001/DOM-Test-Suite/level1/core/hc_elementremoveattribute
Status: failure
Detail: attrValue: assertEquals failed, actual null, expected .

__________

Since all browsers are matching, we can mark this as 'RESOLVED CONFIGURATION CHANGED". Thanks!