W3Schools

home HOME

XML DOM Tutorial
DOM HOME
DOM Introduction
DOM Nodes
DOM Node Tree
DOM Parsing
DOM Load Function
DOM Methods
DOM Accessing
DOM Node Info
DOM Node List
DOM Traversing
DOM Browsers
DOM Navigating

Manipulate Nodes
DOM Get Values
DOM Change Nodes
DOM Remove Nodes
DOM Replace Nodes
DOM Create Nodes
DOM Add Nodes
DOM Clone Nodes
DOM HttpRequest

XML DOM Reference
DOM Node Types
DOM Node
DOM NodeList
DOM NamedNodeMap
DOM Document
DOM DocumentImpl
DOM DocumentType
DOM ProcessingInstr
DOM Element
DOM Attribute
DOM Text
DOM CDATA
DOM Comment
DOM HttpRequest
DOM ParseError Obj
DOM Parser Errors

DOM Summary

Examples
DOM Examples
DOM Validator

Selected Reading
Web Statistics
Web Glossary
Web Hosting
Web Quality

W3Schools Forum

Helping W3Schools

XML DOM childNodes Property


Element Object Reference Complete Element Object Reference

Definition and Usage

The childNodes property returns a NodeList containing the child nodes of the selected node

If the selected node has no children, this property returns a NodeList containing no nodes.

Syntax

elementNode.childNodes
 

Tips and Notes

Tip: To loop through a childNodes list, it is more efficient to use the nextSibling property than to explicitly use the childNodes list of the parent object.


Example 1

The following code fragment loads "books.xml" into xmlDoc using loadXMLDoc() and gets the text node from the first <title> element in "books.xml":

xmlDoc=loadXMLDoc("books.xml");
x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("title")[0].childNodes[0];
document.write(x.nodeValue);

The output of the code above will be:

Everyday Italian


Example 2

The following code fragment loads "books.xml" into xmlDoc using loadXMLDoc() and gets the number of child nodes from the first <book> element in "books.xml":

xmlDoc=loadXMLDoc("books.xml");
x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("book")[0].childNodes;
document.write(x.length);

In Internet Explorer the output of the code above will be:

4

In Mozilla browsers the output of the code above will be:

9

Firefox, and most other browsers, will treat empty white-spaces or new lines as text nodes, Internet Explorer will not. So, in the example above, the output will be different.

To read more about the differences between browsers, visit our DOM Browsers chapter in our XML DOM Tutorial.


Try-It-Yourself Demos

getelemenstByTagname() and childNodes - Get an element's value

childNodes - Get the NodeList's length


Element Object Reference Complete Element Object Reference




diploma   

Get Your Diploma!

W3Schools' Online Certification Program is the perfect solution for busy professionals who need to balance work, family, and career building.

The HTML Certificate is for developers who want to document their knowledge of HTML, XHTML, and CSS.

The ASP Certificate is for developers who want to document their knowledge of ASP, SQL, and ADO.



Jump to: Top of Page or HOME or Printer Friendly Printer friendly page

W3Schools provides material for training only. We do not warrant the correctness of its contents. The risk from using it lies entirely with the user. While using this site, you agree to have read and accepted our terms of use and privacy policy.

Copyright 1999-2008 by Refsnes Data. All Rights Reserved.

Validate Validate W3C-WAI level A conformance icon W3Schools was converted to XHTML in December 1999