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HTML DOM
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DOM Intro
DOM Nodes
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DOM Node Access
DOM Node Info
DOM How To
DOM Events
DOM Summary

DOM Objects

HTML DOM Nodes

HTML DOM Introduction HTML DOM Node Tree

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.


HTML DOM Introduction HTML DOM Node Tree