DevGuru XML DOM Element Object



			OBJECT: Element
			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)