XML DOM » Objects » 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.
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.
Examples
Code:
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>
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>")
NextOutput:
staff
employee
f_name
l_name
employee
f_name
l_nameExplanation:
To illustrate the Element object, this 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.
Language(s): VBScript XML
Properties
- attributes
Syntax: node.attributes
This is a read-only property that returns a NamedNodeMap for nodes that can have attributes.
- baseName
Syntax: document.basename
This is a read-only property that returns the base name for a node.
- childNodes
Syntax: node.childNodes
This is a read-only property containing a node list of all children for those elements that can have them.
- dataType
Syntax: node.dataType
This is a read-only property that specifies the data type for the node.
- definition
Syntax: node.definition
This property returns the definition of the node in the DTD or schema.
- firstChild
Syntax: node.firstChild
This is a read-only property that returns the first child node of a node. If there is none, it returns null.
- lastChild
Syntax: node.lastChild
This is a read-only property that returns the last child node of a node. If there is none, it returns null.
- namespaceURI
Syntax: object.namespaceURI
This property is read-only and returns the URI (Universal Resource Indentifier) of the namespace.
- nextSibling
Syntax: node.nextSibling
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).
- nodeName
Syntax: node.nodeName
This property is read-only and contains the name of the node, depending on type.
- nodeType
Syntax: node.nodeType
This property is read-only and contains the name of the node, depending on type.
- nodeTypedValue
Syntax: node.nodeTypedValue
This property contains the value of this node expressed in its defined data type.
- nodeTypeString
Syntax: node.nodeTypeString
This property is read-only and returns the node type in string form.
- nodeValue
Syntax: node.nodeValue
This property contains the value of the node, depending on type.
- ownerDocument
Syntax: node.ownerDocument
This property returns the Document object to which the node belongs. If the node itself is a document, then it returns null.
- parentNode
Syntax: node.parentNode
This is a read-only property that returns the parent node of all nodes except Document, DocumentFragment and Attr, which cannot have parent nodes.
- parsed
Syntax: node.parsed
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.
- prefix
Syntax: object.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.
- previousSibling
Syntax: node.previousSibling
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 an child node (Attr, Document, DocumentFragment).
- specified
Syntax: node.specified
This property returns a boolean value which indicates whether or not this attribute has a value specified in the XML document.
- tagName
Syntax: Element.tagName
This property returns the name of the element (i.e. the name within the tag).
- text
Syntax: node.text
This property contains the text content of this node and its subtrees.
- xml
Syntax: node.xml
This property contains the XML representation of this node and its descendants.
Methods
- appendChild
Syntax: node.appendChild(tagName)
This method appends a new child node to the list of children for this node.
- cloneNode
Syntax: node.cloneNode(deep)
This method creates a clone node which is an exact replica of this node.
- getAttribute
Syntax: element.getAttribute(name)
This method returns a string containing the value of the specified attribute.
- getAttributeNode
Syntax: element.getAttributeNode(name)
This method returns an object of the specified name.
- getElementsByTagName
Syntax: element.getElementsByTagName(name)
This method returns a NodeList of all descendant elements of the specified name.
- hasChildNodes
Syntax: node.hasChildNodes
This method is a convenient way to determine whether a node has child nodes, returning true if it has, and false if not.
- insertBefore
Syntax: node.insertBefore(newChild, refChild)
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.
- normalize
Syntax: element.normalize( )
This method normalizes all subtree Text nodes, i.e., it combines two or more adjacent ones into a single one.
- removeAttribute
Syntax: element.removeAttribute(name)
This method is used to remove an attribute of the specified name from the element.
- removeAttributeNode
Syntax: element.removeAttributeNode(name)
This method removes the specified attribute from the element, returning the removed
- removeChild
Syntax: node.removeChild(oldChild)
This method removes the specified node from the list of children and returns it.
- replaceChild
Syntax: node.replaceChild(newChild, oldChild)
This method is used to replace one of a node's children with another. It returns the old child.
- selectNodes
Syntax: node.selectNodes(patternString)
This method creates a NodeList of all matching descendant nodes returned by the specified pattern-matching operation.
- selectSingleNode
Syntax: node.selectSingleNode(patternString)
This method returns an object for the first descendant node to match the specified pattern.
- setAttribute
Syntax: element.setAttribute(name, value)
This method sets the value of the named attribute.
- setAttributeNode
Syntax: element.setAttributeNode(name)
This method adds the specified new attribute to the element, replacing any pre-existing one of the same name.
- transformNode
Syntax: node.transformNode(stylesheet)
This method processes this node and its descendants using the specified XSL stylesheet, and returns the resulting transformation.
- transformNodeToObject
Syntax: node.transformNodeToObject(stylesheet, outputObject)
This method processes this node and its descendants using the specified XSL stylesheet, and returns the resulting transformation in the specified object.
See Also:
