Node.childNodes

The Node.childNodes read-only property 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.

let nodeList = elementNodeReference.childNodes;

// parg is an object reference to a <p> element

// First check that the element has child nodes
if (parg.hasChildNodes()) {
  let children = parg.childNodes;

  for (let 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's `length`
  }
}

// This is one way to remove all children from a node
// box is an object reference to an element

while (box.firstChild) {
    //The list is LIVE so it will re-index each call
    box.removeChild(box.firstChild);
}

The items in the collection of nodes are objects, not strings. To get data from node objects, use their properties. (For example, to get the name of the first childNode: elementNodeReference.childNodes[0].nodeName.)

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.)

childNodes includes all child nodes—including non-element nodes like text and comment nodes. To get a collection of only elements, use ParentNode.children instead.

• Node.firstChild
• Node.lastChild
• Node.nextSibling
• Node.previousSibling
• ParentNode.children