XML DOM Node Types

The DOM presents a document as a hierarchy of node objects.

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Try it Yourself - Examples

The examples below use the XML file books.xml. 
A function, loadXMLDoc(), in an external JavaScript is used to load the XML file.

Display nodeName and nodeType of all elements

Display nodeName and nodeValue of all elements

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Node Types

The following table lists the different W3C node types, and which node types they may have as children:

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

Node Types - Return Values

The following table lists what the nodeName and the nodeValue properties will return for each node type:

Node type	nodeName returns	nodeValue returns
Document	#document	null
DocumentFragment	#document fragment	null
DocumentType	doctype name	null
EntityReference	entity reference name	null
Element	element name	null
Attr	attribute name	attribute value
ProcessingInstruction	target	content of node
Comment	#comment	comment text
Text	#text	content of node
CDATASection	#cdata-section	content of node
Entity	entity name	null
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