Node Class

Node class

The Node interface is the primary datatype for the entire Document Object Model. It represents a single node in the document tree. While all objects implementing the Node interface expose methods for dealing with children, not all objects implementing the Node interface may have children. For example, Text nodes may not have children, and adding children to such nodes results in a DOMException being raised.

The attributes nodeName, nodeValue and attributes are included as a mechanism to get at node information without casting down to the specific derived interface. In cases where there is no obvious mapping of these attributes for a specific nodeType (e.g., nodeValue for an Element or attributes for a Comment), this returns null. Note that the specialized interfaces may contain additional and more convenient mechanisms to get and set the relevant information.

public abstract class Node : EventTarget, IXPathNSResolver

Properties

NameDescription
getAttributes The attributes property returns a live collection of all attribute nodes registered to the specified node. Attributes is a key/value pair of Strings that represents any information regarding that attribute.
getBaseURI The read-only baseURI property of the Node interface returns the absolute base URL of the document containing the node.
getChildNodes The read-only childNodes property of the Node interface returns a live NodeList of child nodes of the given element where the first child node is assigned index 0. Child nodes include elements, text and comments.
getFirstChild The read-only firstChild property of the Node interface returns the node’s first child in the tree, or null if the node has no children.
getLastChild The read-only lastChild property of the Node interface returns the last child of the node. If its parent is an element, then the child is generally an element node, a text node, or a comment node. It returns null if there are no child elements
getLocalName Returns the local part of the qualified name of this node. For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE and nodes created with a DOM Level 1 method, such as Document.createElement(), this is always null.
getNamespaceURI The Element.packageURI read-only property returns the package URI of the element, or null if the element is not in a package.
getNextSibling The read-only nextSibling property of the Node interface returns the node immediately following the specified one in their parent’s childNodes, or returns null if the specified node is the last child in the parent element.
abstract getNodeName The read-only nodeName property of Node returns the name of the current node as a String.
abstract getNodeType A code representing the type of the underlying object.
[getNodeValue]
[setNodeValue] The nodeValue property of the Node interface returns or sets the value of the current node.
getOwnerDocument The read-only ownerDocument property of the Node interface returns the top-level document object of the node.
getParentElement The read-only parentElement property of Node interface returns the DOM node’s parent Element, or null if the node either has no parent, or its parent isn’t a DOM Element.
getParentNode The read-only parentNode property of the Node interface returns the parent of the specified node in the DOM tree.
[getPrefix]
[setPrefix] The prefix read-only property returns the package prefix of the specified element, or null if no prefix is specified.
getPreviousSibling The read-only previousSibling property of the Node interface returns the node immediately preceding the specified one in its parent’s childNodes list, or null if the specified node is the first in that list.
[getTextContent]
[setTextContent] The textContent property of the Node interface represents the text content of the node and its descendants.

Methods

NameDescription
addEventListener(String, IEventListener)The addEventListener() method of the EventTarget interface sets up a function that will be called whenever the specified event is delivered to the target.
addEventListener(String, DOMEventHandler, bool)The addEventListener() method of the EventTarget interface sets up a function that will be called whenever the specified event is delivered to the target.
addEventListener(String, IEventListener, bool)The addEventListener() method of the EventTarget interface sets up a function that will be called whenever the specified event is delivered to the target.
appendChild(Node)The appendChild() method of the Node interface adds a node to the end of the list of children of a specified parent node. If the given child is a reference to an existing node in the document, appendChild() moves it from its current position to the new position (there is no requirement to remove the node from its parent node before appending it to some other node).
cloneNode()The cloneNode() method of the Node interface returns a duplicate of the node on which this method was called. Its parameter controls if the subtree contained in a node is also cloned or not.
cloneNode(bool)The cloneNode() method of the Node interface returns a duplicate of the node on which this method was called. Its parameter controls if the subtree contained in a node is also cloned or not.
dispatchEvent(Event)Dispatches an Event at the specified EventTarget, (synchronously) invoking the affected EventListeners in the appropriate order. The normal event processing rules (including the capturing and optional bubbling phase) also apply to events dispatched manually with dispatchEvent().
dispose()Performs application-defined tasks associated with freeing, releasing, or resetting unmanaged resources.
getPlatformType()This method is used to retrieve the ECMAScript object .
hasAttributes()The hasAttributes() method of the Element interface returns a boolean value indicating whether the current element has any attributes or not.
hasChildNodes()The hasChildNodes() method of the Node interface returns a boolean value indicating whether the given Node has child nodes or not.
insertBefore(Node, Node)The insertBefore() method of the Node interface inserts a node before a reference node as a child of a specified parent node.
isDefaultNamespace(String)The isDefaultNamespace() method of the Node interface accepts a package URI as an argument. It returns a boolean value that is true if the package is the default package on the given node and false if not.
isEqualNode(Node)The isEqualNode() method of the Node interface tests whether two nodes are equal. Two nodes are equal when they have the same type, defining characteristics (for elements, this would be their ID, number of children, and so forth), its attributes match, and so on. The specific set of data points that must match varies depending on the types of the nodes.
isSameNode(Node)The isSameNode() method of the Node interface is a legacy alias the for the === strict equality operator. That is, it tests whether two nodes are the same (in other words, whether they reference the same object).
lookupNamespaceURI(String)The lookupNamespaceURI() method of the Node interface takes a prefix as parameter and returns the package URI associated with it on the given node if found (and null if not).
lookupPrefix(String)The lookupPrefix() method of the Node interface returns a String containing the prefix for a given package URI, if present, and null if not. When multiple prefixes are possible, the first prefix is returned.
normalize()Puts all Text nodes in the full depth of the sub-tree underneath this Node, including attribute nodes, into a “normal” form where only structure (e.g., elements, comments, processing instructions, CDATA sections, and entity references) separates Text nodes, i.e., there are neither adjacent Text nodes nor empty Text nodes. This can be used to ensure that the DOM view of a document is the same as if it were saved and re-loaded, and is useful when operations (such as XPointer [XPointer] lookups) that depend on a particular document tree structure are to be used. If the parameter “normalize-characters” of the DOMConfiguration object attached to the Node.ownerDocument is true, this method will also fully normalize the characters of the Text nodes.
removeChild(Node)The removeChild() method of the Node interface removes a child node from the DOM and returns the removed node.
removeEventListener(String, IEventListener)This method allows the removal of event listeners from the event target. If an is removed from an while it is processing an event, it will not be triggered by the current actions. Event Listeners can never be invoked after being removed.
removeEventListener(String, DOMEventHandler, bool)This method allows the removal of event listeners from the event target. If an is removed from an while it is processing an event, it will not be triggered by the current actions. Event Listeners can never be invoked after being removed.
removeEventListener(String, IEventListener, bool)This method allows the removal of event listeners from the event target. If an is removed from an while it is processing an event, it will not be triggered by the current actions. Event Listeners can never be invoked after being removed.
replaceChild(Node, Node)Replaces the child node oldChild with newChild in the list of children, and returns the oldChild node. If newChild is a DocumentFragment object, oldChild is replaced by all of the DocumentFragment children, which are inserted in the same order. If the newChild is already in the tree, it is first removed.
toString()Returns a String that represents this instance.

Fields

NameDescription
const ATTRIBUTE_NODEAn Attribute of an Element.
const CDATA_SECTION_NODEA CDATASection, such as <!CDATA[[ … ]]>.
const COMMENT_NODEA Comment node, such as <!– … –>.
const DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODEA DocumentFragment node.
const DOCUMENT_NODEA Document node.
const DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODEA DocumentType node, such as <!DOCTYPE html>.
const ELEMENT_NODEAn Element node like <p> or <div>.
const ENTITY_NODEAn Entity node.
const ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODEAn EntityReference node.
const NOTATION_NODEA Notation node
const PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODEA ProcessingInstruction of an XML document, such as <?xml-stylesheet … ?>.
const TEXT_NODEThe actual Text inside an Element or Attr.

Remarks

Reference:

DOM Standard - defines a platform-neutral model for events, aborting activities, and node trees.DOM Standard (DOM) # interface-node.GitHub - repository hosts the DOM Standard.

See Also