In addition to the properties below,Node inherits properties from its parent,EventTarget.

Node.baseURIRead only

Returns a string representing the base URL of the documentcontaining theNode.

Node.childNodesRead only

Returns a liveNodeList containing all the children of this node(including elements, text and comments).NodeList being live means thatif the children of theNode change, theNodeList object isautomatically updated.

Node.firstChildRead only

Returns aNode representing the first direct child node of the node,ornull if the node has no child.

Node.isConnectedRead only

A boolean indicating whether or not the Node is connected (directly or indirectly)to the context object, e.g., theDocument object in the case of thenormal DOM, or theShadowRoot in the case of a shadow DOM.

Node.lastChildRead only

Returns aNode representing the last direct child node of the node,ornull if the node has no child.

Node.nextSiblingRead only

Returns aNode representing the next node in the tree, ornull if there isn't such node.

Node.nodeNameRead only

Returns a string containing the name of theNode. Thestructure of the name will differ with the node type. E.g. AnHTMLElement will contain the name of the corresponding tag, like'AUDIO' for anHTMLAudioElement, aTextnode will have the'#text' string, or aDocument node willhave the'#document' string.

Node.nodeTypeRead only

Returns anunsigned short representing the type of the node. Possiblevalues are:

Name	Value
ELEMENT_NODE	1
ATTRIBUTE_NODE	2
TEXT_NODE	3
CDATA_SECTION_NODE	4
PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE	7
COMMENT_NODE	8
DOCUMENT_NODE	9
DOCUMENT_TYPE_NODE	10
DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE	11

Node.nodeValue

Returns / Sets the value of the current node.

Node.ownerDocumentRead only

Returns theDocument that this node belongs to. If the node is itselfa document, returnsnull.

Node.parentNodeRead only

Returns aNode that is the parent of this node. If there is no suchnode, like if this node is the top of the tree or if doesn't participate in a tree,this property returnsnull.

Node.parentElementRead only

Returns anElement that is the parent of this node. If the node hasno parent, or if that parent is not anElement, this property returnsnull.

Node.previousSiblingRead only

Returns aNode representing the previous node in the tree, ornull if there isn't such node.

Node.textContent

Returns / Sets the textual content of an element and all its descendants.

In addition to the methods below,Node inherits methods from its parent,EventTarget.

Node.appendChild()

Adds the specifiedchildNode argument as the last child to the current node.If the argument referenced an existing node on the DOM tree, the node will be detachedfrom its current position and attached at the new position.

Node.cloneNode()

Clone aNode, and optionally, all of its contents. By default, itclones the content of the node.

Node.compareDocumentPosition()

Compares the position of the current node against another node in any other document.

Node.contains()

Returnstrue orfalse value indicating whether or not a node is adescendant of the calling node.

Node.getRootNode()

Returns the context object's root which optionally includes the shadow root if it is available.

Node.hasChildNodes()

Returns a boolean value indicating whether or not the element has any child nodes.

Node.insertBefore()

Inserts aNode before the reference node as a child of a specifiedparent node.

Node.isDefaultNamespace()

Accepts a namespace URI as an argument and returns a boolean value with avalue oftrue if the namespace is the default namespace on the given nodeorfalse if not.

Node.isEqualNode()

Returns a boolean value which indicates whether or not two nodes are of thesame type and all their defining data points match.

Node.isSameNode()

Returns a boolean value indicating whether or not the two nodes arethe same (that is, they reference the same object).

Node.lookupPrefix()

Returns a string containing the prefix for a given namespace URI,if present, andnull if not. When multiple prefixes are possible, theresult is implementation-dependent.

Node.lookupNamespaceURI()

Accepts a prefix and returns the namespace URI associated with it on the given nodeif found (andnull if not). Supplyingnull for the prefixwill return the default namespace.

Node.normalize()

Clean up all the text nodes under this element (merge adjacent, remove empty).

Node.removeChild()

Removes a child node from the current element, which must be a child of the currentnode.

Node.replaceChild()

Replaces one childNode of the current one with the second one givenin parameter.

selectstart

Fires when the user starts a new selection in this node.

This function remove each first child of an element, until there are none left.

function removeAllChildren(element) {  while (element.firstChild) {    element.removeChild(element.firstChild);  }}

Using this function is a single call. Here we empty the body of the document:

removeAllChildren(document.body);

An alternative could be to set the textContent to the empty string:document.body.textContent = "".

The following function recursively calls a callback function for each node contained bya root node (including the root itself):

function eachNode(rootNode, callback) {  if (!callback) {    const nodes = [];    eachNode(rootNode, (node) => {      nodes.push(node);    });    return nodes;  }  if (callback(rootNode) === false) {    return false;  }  if (rootNode.hasChildNodes()) {    for (const node of rootNode.childNodes) {      if (eachNode(node, callback) === false) {        return;      }    }  }}

The function recursively calls a function for each descendant node ofrootNode (including the root itself).

Ifcallback is omitted, the function returns anArray instead, which containsrootNode and allnodes contained within.

Ifcallback is provided, and it returnsfalse when called, the current recursion level is aborted, and the functionresumes execution at the last parent's level. This can be used to abort loops once anode has been found (such as searching for a text node which contains a certain string).

The function has two parameters:

rootNode

TheNode object whose descendants will be recursed through.

callbackOptional

An optional callbackfunction thatreceives aNode as its only argument. If omitted,eachNodereturns anArray of every node contained withinrootNode (including the root itself).

The following demonstrates a real-world use of theeachNode() function:searching for text on a web-page.

We use a wrapper function namedgrep to do the searching:

function grep(parentNode, pattern) {  let matches = [];  let endScan = false;  eachNode(parentNode, (node) => {    if (endScan) {      return false;    }    // Ignore anything which isn't a text node    if (node.nodeType !== Node.TEXT_NODE) {      return;    }    if (typeof pattern === "string" && node.textContent.includes(pattern)) {      matches.push(node);    } else if (pattern.test(node.textContent)) {      if (!pattern.global) {        endScan = true;        matches = node;      } else {        matches.push(node);      }    }  });  return matches;}