Question

when i try to access child nodes i can , but i can’t access their value it says null

     if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
      {// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
      xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
      }
    else
      {// code for IE6, IE5
      xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
      }
    xmlhttp.open("GET","obj.xml",false);
    xmlhttp.send();
    xmlDoc=xmlhttp.responseXML;
    x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("Objnode")[0].childNodes; 
    y=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("Objnode")[0].firstChild;    
    for (i=0;i<x.length;i++)
    {
    if (y.nodeType==1)
      {//Process only element nodes (type 1)
      document.write(y.nodeName + "<br>"); change it to y.nodeValue it says null!
      }
    y=y.nextSibling;
    }

my xml is like

    <Objnode>
            <Object1>something</Object1>
            <Object2>something</Object2>
    </Objnode>

above code works but the line

document.write(y.nodeName + "<br>"); 

when changed it to y.nodeValue it says null!

Answer 1

Actually nodeType 1 is an HTML element, i.e. div, span etc and an element doesn’t has any nodeValue instead it could contain child nodes and remember that any text inside an element is also a node (text node). Look at this example

HTML

<div id="d">First Text Node <br /> Another Text Node</div>​

JS

var n=document.getElementById('d');
alert(n.firstChild.nodeValue);​ // First Text Node
alert(n.childNodes[2].nodeValue); // Another Text Node

So, in your example y.nodeValue is null.

DEMO.