XML DOM firstChildProperty

Node object

Definition and Usage

The firstChild attribute returns the first child node of the specified node.

Syntax

nodeObject.firstChild

Tips and notes

Note:Firefox and most other browsers treat empty spaces or line breaks generated between nodes as text nodes, whereas Internet Explorer ignores whitespace text nodes generated between nodes. Therefore, in the example below, we will use a function to check the node type of the first child node.

The node type of an element node is 1. Therefore, if the first child node is not an element node, it moves to the next node and continues checking whether this node is an element node. This process continues until the first element child node is found. In this way, we can obtain correct results in all browsers.

Tip:To learn more about browser differences, please visit our ... in our XML DOM tutorial.DOM browserChapter.

Example

The following code snippet usesloadXMLDoc()put "books.xmlLoad it into xmlDoc and display the node name and node type of the first child node:

Example

//Get the name and value of the first child node function get_firstchild(n) { x=n.firstChild; while (x.nodeType!=1) { x=x.nextSibling; } return x; } xmlDoc=loadXMLDoc("books.xml"); x=get_firstchild(xmlDoc); document.write("Nodename: " + x.nodeName); document.write("nodetype: " + x.nodeType);

Output:

Nodename: bookstore nodetype: 1

Try it Yourself »

Try it Yourself

Get the last child node of the document

Node objectother extensions