HTML DOM Element nodeType
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.
Description
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.
Syntax
node.nodeType
Return Value
| Type | Description |
| Number | The node type of the node. See table below. |
Node Types
Documents, elements, attributes, and other nodes of HTML or XML documents has different node types.
There are 12 different node types, which may have children of various node types:
| 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:
| Type | nodeName | nodeValue | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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
| Type | 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
Display the node types of all elements:
const nodes = document.body.childNodes;
let text = "";
for (let i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) {
text += nodes[i].nodeType + "<br>";
}
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Example
Get the node name, value and type of "myDIV"s first child node:
const x = document.getElementById("myDIV").firstChild;
let text = "";
text += "Name: " + x.nodeName + "<br>";
text += "Value: " + x.nodeValue + "<br>";
text += "Type: " + x.nodeType;
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Browser Support
element.nodeType is a DOM Level 1 (1998) feature.
It is fully supported in all browsers:
| Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Safari | Opera | IE |
| Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 9-11 |