The text of a CDATASection is stored in a Text node, and may contain characters that need to be escaped outside of CDATA sections. Unlike Text nodes, however, you cannot merge adjacent CDATA sections using the Element object's normalize method.

In the following example we use the 'staff.xml' file. The 'f_name' element of the first 'employee' consists of text which includes HTML <SPAN> tags with style information. In order to prevent those tags being parsed by the XML parser, we include them in a CDATASection. This allows them to pass through the parser intact and subsequently be applied as normal to the text. Finally the code displays the nodeName, nodeType and data (note the affect of those <SPAN> tags) properties for the CDATASection.

XML:
<staff>
   <employee ssn="123456" pay="3">
      <f_name><![CDATA[<span style="color:red">John</span>]]><f_name>
      <l_name>Sullivan</l_name>
   </employee>
   <employee ssn="987654" pay="2">
      <f_name>Mary</f_name>
      <l_name>Lopez</l_name>
   </employee>
</staff>

Code (JavaScript):
xml_doc = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");
xml_doc.async = false;
xml_doc.load("staff.xml");

elem = xml_doc.documentElement.firstChild.firstChild.firstChild;
document.write(elem.nodeName);
document.write("<br>" + elem.nodeType);
document.write("<br>" + elem.data);

Output:
#cdata-section
4
John

A CDATASection has no methods or properties of its own but inherits those of the Text and Node objects. For details of the values returned by the nodeName, nodeType and nodeValue properties for a CDATASection, see the Node object.