DOM:element.childNodes
From MDC
Contents |
[edit] Summary
childNodes returns a collection of child nodes of the given element.
[edit] Syntax and values
var ndList = elementNodeReference.childNodes;
ndList is an ordered collection of node objects that are children of the current element. If the element has no children, then ndList contains no node.
The ndList is a variable storing the node list of childNodes. Such list is of type NodeList. The childNodes attribute is read-only.
[edit] Example
// parg is an object reference to a <p> element
if (parg.hasChildNodes())
// So, first we check if the object is not empty, if the object has child nodes
{
var children = parg.childNodes;
for (var i = 0; i < children.length; i++)
{
// do something with each child as children[i]
// NOTE: List is live, Adding or removing children will change the list
};
};
// This is one way to remove all children from a node
// box is an object refrence to an element with children
while (box.firstChild)
{
//The list is LIVE so it will re-index each call
box.removeChild(box.firstChild);
};
[edit] Notes
The items in the collection of nodes are objects and not strings. To get data from those node objects, you must use their properties (e.g. elementNodeReference.childNodes[1].nodeName to get the name, etc.).
The document object itself has 2 children: the Doctype declaration and the root element, typically referred to as documentElement. (In (X)HTML documents this is the HTML element.)
[edit] See Also
firstChild, lastChild and previousSibling