HTML DOM

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In the DOM, everything in an HTML document is a node.

DOM Nodes

According to the DOM, everything in an HTML document is a node.

The DOM says:

The entire document is a document node
Every HTML element is an element node
The text in the HTML elements are text nodes
Every HTML attribute is an attribute node
Comments are comment nodes

DOM Example

Look at the following HTML document:

<html>
  <head>
    <title>DOM Tutorial</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>DOM Lesson one</h1>
    <p>Hello world!</p>
  </body>
</html>

The root node in the HTML above is <html>. All other nodes in the document are contained within <html>.

The <html> node has two child nodes; <head> and <body>.

The <head> node holds a <title> node. The <body> node holds a <h1> and <p> node.

Text is Always Stored in Text Nodes

A common error in DOM processing is to expect an element node to contain text.

However, the text of an element node is stored in a text node.

In this example: <title>DOM Tutorial</title>, the element node <title>, holds a text node with the value "DOM Tutorial".

"DOM Tutorial" is not the value of the <title> element!

However, in the HTML DOM the value of the text node can be accessed by the innerHTML property.

You can read more about the innerHTML property in a later chapter.