The Element object is one of the most common types of Node
that will be encountered in a document tree. An Element may have attributes, but
these are considered to be properties of the Element rather than children. The
Element object, therefore, provides a number of methods designed to make the handling
of attributes easier.
To illustrate the Element object, the following code uses the
getElementsByTagName method to get all the
elements in the 'staff.xml' file, and then iterates through the resulting
NodeList collection displaying the
tagName of each.
XML:
<staff>
<employee ssn="123456" pay="3">
<f_name>John</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 (VBScript):
Set objXMLDoc = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
objXMLDoc.async = False
objXMLDoc.load("staff.xml")
Set NodeList = objXMLDoc.getElementsByTagName("*")
For Each Elem In NodeList
document.write(Elem.tagName & "<br>")
Next
Output:
staff
employee
f_name
l_name
employee
f_name
l_name
An Element is also a Node object, and so inherits
various properties and methods from it. For details of the values returned by the
nodeName,
nodeType and nodeValue
properties for an Element, see the Node object.
 denotes a Microsoft extension to the W3C DOM.
PROPERTIES
attributes Property
This is a read-only property that returns an
NamedNodeMap for nodes that can have
attributes.
Syntax: Node.attributes
baseName Property
This is a read-only property that returns the base name for a node.
Syntax: Node.baseName
childNodes Property
This is a read-only property containing a node list of all children for those elements that
can have them.
Syntax: Node.childNodes
dataType Property
This is a read-only property that specifies the data type for the node.
Syntax: Node.dataType
definition Property
This property returns the definition of the node in the DTD or schema.
Syntax: Node.definition
firstChild Property
This is a read-only property that returns the first child node of a node. If there is none,
it returns null.
Syntax: Node.firstChild
lastChild Property
This is a read-only property that returns the last child node of a node. If there is none,
it returns null.
Syntax: Node.lastChild
namespaceURI Property
This property is read-only and returns the URI (Universal Resource Indentifier) of the
namespace.
Syntax: Node.namespaceURI
nextSibling Property
This property returns the next node in the parent's child list, or null if there
is none or the node is of a type that cannot be a child node
(Attr,
Document,
DocumentFragment).
Syntax: Node.nextSibling
nodeName Property
This property is read-only and contains the name of the node, depending on type.
Syntax: Node.nodeName
nodeType Property
This is a read-only property specifying the type of the node.
Syntax: Node.nodeType
nodeTypeString Property
This property is read-only and returns the node type in string form.
Syntax: Node.nodeTypeString
nodeValue Property
This property contains the value of the node, depending on type.
Syntax: Node.nodeValue
ownerDocument Property
This property returns the Document object to which the
node belongs. If the node itself is a document, then it returns null.
Syntax: Node.ownerDocument
parentNode Property
This is a read-only property that returns the parent node of all nodes except
Document,
DocumentFragment and
Attr, which cannot have parent nodes.
Syntax: Node.parentNode
parsed Property
This property returns a boolean value of true if this node and all of its
descendants have been parsed and instantiated. Otherwise it returns false.
Syntax: Node.parsed
prefix Property
This property is read-only and returns the namespace prefix, or an empty string if none
is specified. For example, it would return 'xxx' for the element <xxx:yyy>.
Syntax: Node.prefix
previousSibling Property
This property returns the previous node in the parent's child list, or null if
there is none or the node is of a type that cannot be a child node
(Attr,
Document,
DocumentFragment).
Syntax: Node.previousSibling
specified Property
This property returns a boolean value indicating whether this node (usually an attribute)
is explicitly specified or derived from a default value in the DTD or schema.
Syntax: Node.specified
tagName Property
This property returns the name of the element (i.e. the name within the tag).
Syntax: Element.tagName
text Property
This property contains the text content of this node and its subtrees.
Syntax: Node.text
xml Property
This property contains the XML representation of this node and its descendants.
Syntax: Node.xml
METHODS
appendChild Method
This method appends a new child node to the list of children for this node.
Syntax: Node.appendChild(tagName)
cloneNode Method
This method creates a clone node which is an exact replica of this node.
Syntax: Node.cloneNode(deep)
getAttribute Method
This method returns a string containing the value of the specified attribute.
Syntax: Element.getAttribute(name)
getAttributeNode Method
This method returns an Attr object of the specified name.
Syntax: Element.getAttributeNode(name)
getElementsByTagName Method
This method returns a NodeList of all descendant elements
of the specified name.
Syntax: Element.getElementsByTagName(name)
hasChildNodes Method
This method is a convenient way to determine whether a node has child nodes, returning
true if it has, and false if not.
Syntax: Node.hasChildNodes( )
insertBefore Method
This method is used to insert a new child node before an existing one. If no child node
exists, the new child node becomes the first.
Syntax: Node.insertBefore(newChild, refChild)
normalize Method
This method normalizes all subtree Text nodes, i.e.,
it combines two or more adjacent ones into a single one.
Syntax: Element.normalize( )
removeAttribute Method
This method is used to remove an attribute of the specified name from the element.
Syntax: Element.removeAttribute(name)
removeAttributeNode Method
This method removes the specified attribute from the element, returning the removed
Attr object.
Syntax: Element.removeAttributeNode(attribute)
removeChild Method
This method removes the specified node from the list of children and returns it.
Syntax: Node.removeChild(oldChild)
replaceChild Method
This method is used to replace one of a node's children with another. It returns the old
child.
Syntax: Node.replaceChild(newChild, oldChild)
selectNodes Method
This method creates a NodeList of all the matching
descendant nodes returned by the specified pattern-matching operation.
Syntax: Node.selectNodes(patternString)
selectSingleNode Method
This method returns a Node object for the first descendant
node to match the specified pattern.
Syntax: Node.selectSingleNode(patternString)
setAttribute Method
This method sets the value of the named attribute.
Syntax: Element.setAttribute(name, value)
setAttributeNode Method
This method adds the specified new attribute to the element, replacing any pre-existing
one of the same name.
Syntax: Element.setAttributeNode(attr)
transformNode Method
This method processes this node and its descendants using the specified XSL stylesheet,
and returns the resulting transformation.
Syntax: Node.transformNode(stylesheet)
transformNodeToObject Method
This method processes this node and its descendants using the specified XSL stylesheet,
and returns the resulting transformation in the specified object.
Syntax: Node.transformNodeToObject(stylesheet, outputObject)
Copyright 1999-2001 by Infinite Software Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.
Trademark Information
|