HTML DOM NodeType Properties

Instance

Gets the node type of the BODY element:

Document.body.nodeType;

Results:

1

Definition and usage

The NodeType property returns the node type that returns the specified node as a numeric value.

If the node is an element node, the NodeType property returns 1.

If the node is an attribute node, the NodeType property returns 2.

Browser support

IE	Firefox	Chrome	Safari	Opera
√	√	√	√	√

NodeType properties are supported in all major browsers.

Grammar

Node.nodetype

Technical details

return value:	A string value that represents the node type of the node.
DOM version	Core Level 1 Node Object

Node Types

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

There are 12 different node types, which may have child nodes of different node types:

node Type		Description	child Nodes
1	Element	Represents an Element	Element, Text, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, Cdatasection, EntityReference
2	Attr	Represents a property	Text, EntityReference
3	Text	Represents the text content in an element or attribute.	None
4	Cdatasection	Represents a CDATA section in a document (text that is not parsed by the 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	To provide an interface to an entity defined for a document	None
11	DocumentFragment	Represents a lightweight document object that can hold a portion of a file	Element, ProcessingInstruction, Comment, Text, Cdatasection, EntityReference
12	Notation	Represents the symbol declared in the DTD.	None

Node Type-return value

For each node type, the return value of the NodeName and NodeValue properties:

node Type		NodeName return	NodeValue return
1	Element	Element name	Null
2	Attr	Property name	Property value
3	Text	#text	The contents of the node
4	Cdatasection	#cdata-section	The contents of the node
5	EntityReference	Entity reference name	Null
6	Entity	Entity Name	Null
7	ProcessingInstruction	Target	The contents of the node
8	Comment	#comment	Comment Text
9	Document	#document	Null
10	DocumentType	Document type name	Null
11	DocumentFragment	#document fragments	Null
12	Notation	Symbol 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

HTML DOM NodeType Properties