Node Object

Definition and Usage

The Node object represents a node in the HTML document.

A node in an HTML document is:

• The Document
• An element
• An attribute
• Text
• A comment

All of the node types are explained in the Node Types reference at the bottom of this page.

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Browser Support

    

The Node object is supported in all major browsers.

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Node Object Properties

The "DOM" column indicates in which DOM Level the property was introduced.

Property	Description	DOM
attributes	Returns a collection of a node's attributes	1
baseURI	Returns the absolute base URI of a node	3
childNodes	Returns a NodeList of child nodes for a node	1
firstChild	Returns the first child of a node	1
lastChild	Returns the last child of a node	1
localName	Returns the local part of the name of a node	2
namespaceURI	Returns the namespace URI of a node	2
nextSibling	Returns the next node at the same node tree level	1
nodeName	Returns the name of a node, depending on its type	1
nodeType	Returns the type of a node	1
nodeValue	Sets or returns the value of a node, depending on its type	1
ownerDocument	Returns the root element (document object) for a node	2
parentNode	Returns the parent node of a node	1
prefix	Sets or returns the namespace prefix of a node	2
previousSibling	Returns the previous node at the same node tree level	1
textContent	Sets or returns the textual content of a node and its descendants	3

Node Object Methods

The "DOM" column indicates in which DOM Level the method was introduced.

Method	Description	DOM
appendChild()	Adds a new child node, to the specified node, as the last child node	1
cloneNode()	Clones a node	1
compareDocumentPosition()	Compares the document position of two nodes	1
getFeature(feature,version)	Returns a DOM object which implements the specialized APIs of the specified feature and version	3
getUserData(key)	Returns the object associated to a key on a this node. The object must first have been set to this node by calling setUserData with the same key	3
hasAttributes()	Returns true if a node has any attributes, otherwise it returns false	2
hasChildNodes()	Returns true if a node has any child nodes, otherwise it returns false	1
insertBefore()	Inserts a new child node before a specified, existing, child node	1
isDefaultNamespace()	Returns true if the specified namespaceURI is the default, otherwise false	3
isEqualNode()	Checks if two nodes are equal	3
isSameNode()	Checks if two nodes are the same node	3
isSupported()	Returns true if a specified feature is supported on a node, otherwise false	2
lookupNamespaceURI()	Returns the namespace URI matching a specified prefix	3
lookupPrefix()	Returns the prefix matching a specified namespace URI	3
normalize()	Joins adjacent text nodes and removes empty text nodes	2
removeChild()	Removes a child node	1
replaceChild()	Replaces a child node	1
setUserData(key,data,handler)	Associates an object to a key on a node	3

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Node Types

Documents, elements, attributes, and other aspects of an HTML document has different node types.

There are 12 different node types, which may have children of various node types:

Node type		Description	Children
1	Element	Represents an element	Element, Text, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, CDATASection, EntityReference
2	Attr	Represents an attribute	Text, EntityReference
3	Text	Represents textual content in an element or attribute	None
4	CDATASection	Represents a CDATA section in a document (text that will NOT be parsed by a parser)	None
5	EntityReference	Represents an entity reference	Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection, EntityReference
6	Entity	Represents an entity	Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection, EntityReference
7	ProcessingInstruction	Represents a processing instruction	None
8	Comment	Represents a comment	None
9	Document	Represents the entire document (the root-node of the DOM tree)	Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, DocumentType
10	DocumentType	Provides an interface to the entities defined for the document	None
11	DocumentFragment	Represents a "lightweight" Document object, which can hold a portion of a document	Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection, EntityReference
12	Notation	Represents a notation declared in the DTD	None

Node Types - Return Values

The return value of the nodeName and the nodeValue properties for each node type:

Node type		nodeName returns	nodeValue returns
1	Element	element name	null
2	Attr	attribute name	attribute value
3	Text	#text	content of node
4	CDATASection	#cdata-section	content of node
5	EntityReference	entity reference name	null
6	Entity	entity name	null
7	ProcessingInstruction	target	content of node
8	Comment	#comment	comment text
9	Document	#document	null
10	DocumentType	doctype name	null
11	DocumentFragment	#document fragment	null
12	Notation	notation name	null

NodeTypes - Named Constants

NodeType	Named Constant
1	ELEMENT_NODE
2	ATTRIBUTE_NODE
3	TEXT_NODE
4	CDATA_SECTION_NODE
5	ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
6	ENTITY_NODE
7	PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
8	COMMENT_NODE
9	DOCUMENT_NODE
10	DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
11	DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
12	NOTATION_NODE