Home/ Questions/Q 9160171
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-17T13:40:26+00:00

I am performing some simple JS test for traversing and i was wondering why

  • 0

I am performing some simple JS test for traversing and i was wondering why my documentElement consist of one null object?

<html>
    <head>
        <title>My document</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Some header</h1>
        <p id="pID">Some paragraph</p>
        <p name="pNAME">Another paragraph/p>
    </body>
</html>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var rootElement = document.documentElement;
    var childNodes = rootElement.childNodes;

    for (var i = 0; i < childNodes.length; i++) {
      document.write(childNodes[i].localName);
      document.write("<br>");
    }
</script>

It returns head, null, body. But why is there 3 childNodes in the rootElement?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you list only the objects instead of their localName you will see:

    [object HTMLHeadElement]
[object Text]
[object HTMLBodyElement]

    So you receive null for the localName of the text node. To fix this you need children instead of childNodes:

    <script type="text/javascript">
    var rootElement = document.documentElement;
    var childNodes = rootElement.children;

    for (var i = 0; i < childNodes.length; i++) {
      document.write(childNodes[i]);
      document.write("<br>");
    }
</script>

    Here is demo in JSFiddle.

    • 0