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 |