Javascript Reference - HTML DOM nodeType Property








The nodeType property returns the node type, as a number, of the specified node.

If the node is an element node, the nodeType property will return 1.

If the node is an attribute node, the nodeType property will return 2.

Browser Support

nodeType Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Syntax

node.nodeType




Return Value

A String, representing the node type of the node.

Node Types

Documents, elements, attributes, and other aspects of an HTML or XML 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 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 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 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

Element Object

Example

The following code shows how to get the node type of the body element.


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body><p id="demo">test</p>
<h1>header</h1>
text<!--  w  w w  .ja  v a 2 s. c o m-->
<button onclick="myFunction()">test</button>

<script>
function myFunction()
{
    var c=document.body.childNodes;
    for (i=0; i<c.length; i++){
        console.log(c[i].nodeType);
    };
}
</script>
</body>
</html>

The code above is rendered as follows: