HTML DOM nodeType Property

Element Object

Example

Get the node type of the body element:

var x = document.getElementById("myP").nodeType;

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More "Try it Yourself" examples below.

Definition and Usage

The nodeType property returns the node type, as a number, of the specified node.

If the node is an element node, the nodeType property will return 1.

If the node is an attribute node, the nodeType property will return 2.

If the node is a text node, the nodeType property will return 3.

If the node is a comment node, the nodeType property will return 8.

This property is read-only.

Browser Support

Property
nodeType	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Syntax

node.nodeType

Technical Details

Return Value:	A Number, representing the node type of the node
DOM Version	Core Level 1 Node Object

Node Types

Documents, elements, attributes, and other aspects of an HTML or XML document has different node types.

There are 12 different node types, which may have children of various node types:

Node type		Description	Children
1	Element	Represents an element	Element, Text, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, CDATASection, EntityReference
2	Attr	Represents an attribute	Text, EntityReference
3	Text	Represents textual content in an element or attribute	None
4	CDATASection	Represents a CDATA section in a document (text that will NOT be parsed by a parser)	None
5	EntityReference	Represents an entity reference	Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection, EntityReference
6	Entity	Represents an entity	Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection, EntityReference
7	ProcessingInstruction	Represents a processing instruction	None
8	Comment	Represents a comment	None
9	Document	Represents the entire document (the root-node of the DOM tree)	Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, DocumentType
10	DocumentType	Provides an interface to the entities defined for the document	None
11	DocumentFragment	Represents a "lightweight" Document object, which can hold a portion of a document	Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, CDATASection, EntityReference
12	Notation	Represents a notation declared in the DTD	None

Node Types - Return Values

The return value of the nodeName and the nodeValue properties for each node type:

Node type		nodeName returns	nodeValue returns
1	Element	element name	null
2	Attr	attribute name	attribute value
3	Text	#text	content of node
4	CDATASection	#cdata-section	content of node
5	EntityReference	entity reference name	null
6	Entity	entity name	null
7	ProcessingInstruction	target	content of node
8	Comment	#comment	comment text
9	Document	#document	null
10	DocumentType	doctype name	null
11	DocumentFragment	#document fragment	null
12	Notation	notation name	null

NodeTypes - Named Constants

NodeType	Named Constant
1	ELEMENT_NODE
2	ATTRIBUTE_NODE
3	TEXT_NODE
4	CDATA_SECTION_NODE
5	ENTITY_REFERENCE_NODE
6	ENTITY_NODE
7	PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE
8	COMMENT_NODE
9	DOCUMENT_NODE
10	DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE
11	DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE
12	NOTATION_NODE

More Examples

Example

Get the node type of the <body> element:

var x = document.body.nodeType;

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Example

Get the node types of the <body> element's child nodes:

var c = document.body.childNodes;
var txt = "";
var i;
for (i = 0; i < c.length; i++) {
txt = txt + c[i].nodeType + "<br>";
}

document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = txt;

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Example

Get the node name, node value and the node type of the <div> element's first child node:

<div id="myDIV">This is a div element.</div>

<script>
var x = document.getElementById("myDIV").firstChild;
var txt = "";
txt += "The node name: " + x.nodeName + "<br>";
txt += "The node value: " + x.nodeValue + "<br>";
txt += "The node type: " + x.nodeType;
</script>

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HTML DOM reference: node.nodeName Property

HTML DOM reference: node.nodeValue Property

HTML DOM reference: node.childNodes Property

Element Object