XML DOM firstChild Property
 Complete Element Object Reference
Definition and Usage
The firstChild property returns the first child node of the selected
element
If the selected node has no children, this property returns NULL.
Syntax
Tips and Notes
Note: Firefox, and most other browsers, will treat empty white-spaces
or new lines as text nodes, Internet Explorer will not. So,
in the example below, we have a function that checks
the node type of the first child node.
Element nodes has a nodeType of 1, so if the first child node is not an
element node, it moves to the next node, and checks if this node is an element
node. This continues until the first child node (which must be an element node)
is found. This way, the result will be correct in all browsers.
Tip: To read more about the differences between browsers, visit our
DOM Browsers chapter in our XML DOM
Tutorial.
Example
The following code fragment loads "books.xml"
into xmlDoc using
loadXMLDoc() and gets the first child node:
Example
//check if the first node is an element node
function get_firstchild(n)
{
x=n.firstChild;
while (x.nodeType!=1)
{
x=x.nextSibling;
}
return x;
}
xmlDoc=loadXMLDoc("books.xml");
x=xmlDoc.documentElement;
firstNode=get_firstchild(x);
for (i=0;i<firstNode.childNodes.length;i++)
{
if (firstNode.childNodes[i].nodeType==1)
{
//Process only element nodes
document.write(firstNode.childNodes[i].nodeName);
document.write(" = ");
document.write(firstNode.childNodes[i].childNodes[0].nodeValue);
document.write("<br />");
}
}
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The output of the code above will be:
title = Everyday Italian
author = Giada De Laurentiis
year = 2005
price = 30.00
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Try it yourself »
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Complete Element Object Reference
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