Node: nodeValue property

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This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. Its been available across browsers since July 2015.

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The nodeValue property of the Node interface returns or sets the value of the current node.

Value

A string containing the value of the current node, if any. For the document itself, nodeValue returns null. For text, comment, and CDATA nodes, nodeValue returns the content of the node. For attribute nodes, the value of the attribute is returned.

The following table shows the return values for different types of nodes.

Node	Value of nodeValue
`CDATASection`	Content of the CDATA section
`Comment`	Content of the comment
`Document`	`null`
`DocumentFragment`	`null`
`DocumentType`	`null`
`Element`	`null`
`NamedNodeMap`	`null`
`ProcessingInstruction`	Entire content excluding the target
`Text`	Content of the text node

Note: When nodeValue is defined to be null, setting it has no effect.

Example

html

<div id="d1">Hello world</div>
<!-- Example of comment -->
<output id="result">Not calculated yet.</output>

and the following script:

let node = document.querySelector("body").firstChild;
let result = "Node names are:\n";
while (node) {
  result += `Value of ${node.nodeName}: ${node.nodeValue}\n`;
  node = node.nextSibling;
}

const output = document.getElementById("result");
output.innerText = result;

Specifications

Specification
DOM # dom-node-nodevalue

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on Jul 26, 2024 by MDN contributors.

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