Adding or inserting an item into the container automatically sets the Parent property of the item. Removing an item from a container automatically sets the parent property to null.

An item can never appear in more than one container at the same time. Attempting to add an item to a container if it is already in another container causes an exception.

If you want an equivalent item to appear in two containers, you can clone it, and insert the clone into the second container. The cloned item will then reference the same properties object(s).

Implementations of this interface may or may not be IAbstractMarkupData. ITagPair is an example of a container that is also a markup data item, and can therefore appear inside other containers. IParagraph is an example of a container that is NOT a markup data item.

Examples

IAbstractMarkupData GetParent(IAbstractMarkupDataContainer container)
{
    IAbstractMarkupData item = container as IAbstractMarkupData;
    if (item != null)
    {
        return item.Parent;
    }
    // container is not a markup data item
    return null;
}

During content manipulation it is sometimes necessary to split a container into two parts, with the first part containing some of the items, the second containing others, and both containers referencing the same properties objects. The easiest way to accomplish this is to call Split(Int32).

Note that not all containers can be split (for example, IParagraph cannot be split). Before calling Split(Int32) you should therefore check the CanBeSplit property.

Another common operation is to move items into a different container. The easiest way to do that is to use one of the overloads of MoveAllItemsTo() or MoveItemsTo().

It is sometimes necessary to reference locations inside a container. This can be done using the Location class. You can iterate over all possible locations in a container (including locations in nested containers) using the Locations iterator.

Reference