This is a read-only property that returns the first child node of a node. If there is none, it returns null.
The firstChild property is read-only and returns the first child of a given node. If there is no first child, or the node is of a type that cannot have child nodes (see the DOM Structure Model), then it returns null.
XML:
<States>
<State ref="FL">
<name>Florida</name>
<capital>Tallahassee</capital>
</State>
<State ref="IA">
<name>Iowa</name>
<capital>Des Moines</capital>
</State>
</States>
JavaScript:
var xml_doc = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");
xml_doc.async = false;
xml_doc.load("states.xml");
var f_child = xml_doc.documentElement.firstChild.text;
document.write(f_child);
Florida Tallahassee
This example obtains the text of the first child node of the root element of the 'states.xml' file.