Question

In JavaScript DOM, childNodes.length returns the number of both element and text nodes. Is there any way to count only the number of element-only child nodes?

For example, childNodes.length of div#posts will return 6, when I expected 2:

<div id="posts">
    <!-- some comment -->
    <!-- another comment -->
    <div>an element node</div>
    <!-- another comment -->
    <span>an element node</span>
    a text node
</div>

Answer 1

Not directly. Text nodes (including comments and so on) are child nodes.

Your best bet is to iterate over the childNodes array and count up only those nodes with nodeType == Node.ELEMENT_NODE. (And write a function to do so.)