XML DOM Get Node Values
The nodeValue property is used to get the text value of a node.
The getAttribute() method returns the value of an attribute.
Get the Value of an Element
In the DOM, everything is a node. Element nodes do not have a text value.
The text value of an element node is stored in a child node. This node is called a text node.
To retrieve the text value of an element, you must retrieve the value of the elements' text node.
The getElementsByTagName Method
The getElementsByTagName() method returns a node list of all elements, with the specified tag name, in the same order as they appear in the source document.
Suppose books.xml has been loaded into xmlDoc.
This code retrieves the first <title> element:
var x = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("title")[0];
The ChildNodes Property
The childNodes property returns a list of an element's child nodes.
The following code retrieves the text node of the first <title> element:
x = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("title")[0];
y = x.childNodes[0];
The nodeValue Property
The nodeValue property returns the text value of a text node.
The following code retrieves the text value of the text node of the first <title> element:
Example
x = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("title")[0];
y = x.childNodes[0];
z = y.nodeValue;
Result in z: "Everyday Italian"
Complete Example
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<p id="demo"></p>
<script>
var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
myFunction(this);
}
};
xhttp.open("GET",
"books.xml", true);
xhttp.send();
function myFunction(xml) {
var xmlDoc = xml.responseXML;
var x = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName('title')[0];
var y =
x.childNodes[0];
document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = y.nodeValue;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
Try it Yourself »
Loop through all <title> elements: Try it Yourself
Get the Value of an Attribute
In the DOM, attributes are nodes. Unlike element nodes, attribute nodes have text values.
The way to get the value of an attribute, is to get its text value.
This can be done using the getAttribute() method or using the nodeValue property of the getAttributeNode() method.
Get Value Using getAttribute()
The getAttribute() method returns an attribute's value.
The following code retrieves the text value of the "lang" attribute of the first <title> element:
Example
const title = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("title")[0];
let txt = title.getAttribute("lang");
Try it Yourself »
Loop through all <book> elements and get their "category" attributes:
Example
const book = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("book");
for (let i = 0; i < book.length; i++) {
txt += x[i].getAttributeNode("category").nodeValue + "<br>";
}
Try it Yourself »
Get Value Using - getAttributeNode()
The getAttributeNode() method returns an attribute node.
The following code retrieves the text value of the "lang" attribute of the first <title> element:
Example
const title = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("title")[0];
const lang = title.getAttributeNode("lang");
let txt = lang.nodeValue;
Try it Yourself »
Loop through all <book> elements and get their "category" attributes:
Example
const book = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("book");
for (let i = 0; i < book.length; i++) {
txt += x[i].getAttributeNode("category").nodeValue + "<br>";
}
Try it Yourself »
