Element interface

The Element interface represents an element in an HTML or XML document. Elements may have attributes associated with them; since the Element interface inherits from Node, the generic Node interface attribute attributes may be used to retrieve the set of all attributes for an element. There are methods on the Element interface to retrieve either an Attr object by name or an attribute value by name. In XML, where an attribute value may contain entity references, an Attr object should be retrieved to examine the possibly fairly complex sub-tree representing the attribute value. On the other hand, in HTML, where all attributes have simple string values, methods to directly access an attribute value can safely be used as a convenience.

In DOM Level 2, the method normalize is inherited from the Node interface where it was moved.

tagName has the value "elementExample". Note that this is case-preserving in XML, as are all of the operations of the DOM. The HTML DOM returns the tagName of an HTML element in the canonical uppercase form, regardless of the case in the source HTML document.

tagName
Access	read-only
Returns	String

getAttributename
Parameters	Stringname The name of the attribute to retrieve.
Returns	String. The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if that attribute does not have a specified or default value.

getAttributeNSnamespaceURIlocalName
Parameters	StringnamespaceURI The namespace URI of the attribute to retrieve. StringlocalName The local name of the attribute to retrieve.
Returns	String. The Attr value as a string, or the empty string if that attribute does not have a specified or default value.

getAttributeNodename
Parameters	Stringname The name (nodeName) of the attribute to retrieve.
Returns	Attr. The Attr node with the specified name (nodeName) or null if there is no such attribute.

getAttributeNodeNSnamespaceURIlocalName
Parameters	StringnamespaceURI The namespace URI of the attribute to retrieve. StringlocalName The local name of the attribute to retrieve.
Returns	Attr. The Attr node with the specified attribute local name and namespace URI or null if there is no such attribute.

Returns a NodeList of all descendant Elements with a given tag name, in the order in which they are encountered in a preorder traversal of this Element tree.

getElementsByTagNamename
Parameters	Stringname The name of the tag to match on. The special value "*" matches all tags.
Returns	NodeList. A list of matching Element nodes.

Returns a NodeList of all the descendant Elements with a given local name and namespace URI in the order in which they are encountered in a preorder traversal of this Element tree.

getElementsByTagNameNSnamespaceURIlocalName
Parameters	StringnamespaceURI The namespace URI of the elements to match on. The special value "" matches all namespaces. StringlocalName The local name of the elements to match on. The special value "" matches all local names.
Returns	NodeList. A new NodeList object containing all the matched Elements.

hasAttributename
Parameters	Stringname The name of the attribute to look for.
Returns	trueboolean. if an attribute with the given name is specified on this element or has a default value, false otherwise.

Returns true when an attribute with a given local name and namespace URI is specified on this element or has a default value, false otherwise. HTML-only DOM implementations do not need to implement this method.

hasAttributeNSnamespaceURIlocalName
Parameters	StringnamespaceURI The namespace URI of the attribute to look for. StringlocalName The local name of the attribute to look for.
Returns	trueboolean. if an attribute with the given local name and namespace URI is specified or has a default value on this element, false otherwise.

Removes an attribute by name. If the removed attribute is known to have a default value, an attribute immediately appears containing the default value as well as the corresponding namespace URI, local name, and prefix when applicable.

removeAttributename
Parameters	Stringname The name of the attribute to remove.
Returns	void
Throws	DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

Removes an attribute by local name and namespace URI. If the removed attribute has a default value it is immediately replaced. The replacing attribute has the same namespace URI and local name, as well as the original prefix.

removeAttributeNSnamespaceURIlocalName
Parameters	StringnamespaceURI The namespace URI of the attribute to remove. StringlocalName The local name of the attribute to remove.
Returns	void
Throws	DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

Removes the specified attribute node. If the removed Attr has a default value it is immediately replaced. The replacing attribute has the same namespace URI and local name, as well as the original prefix, when applicable.

removeAttributeNodeoldAttr
Parameters	AttroldAttr The Attr node to remove from the attribute list.
Returns	Attr. The Attr node that was removed.
Throws	DOMException NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. NOT_FOUND_ERR: Raised if oldAttr is not an attribute of the element.

Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with that name is already present in the element, its value is changed to be that of the value parameter. This value is a simple string; it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as syntax to be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is written out. In order to assign an attribute value that contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.

setAttributenamevalue
Parameters	Stringname The name of the attribute to create or alter. Stringvalue Value to set in string form.
Returns	void
Throws	DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified name contains an illegal character. NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly.

Adds a new attribute. If an attribute with the same local name and namespace URI is already present on the element, its prefix is changed to be the prefix part of the qualifiedName, and its value is changed to be the value parameter. This value is a simple string; it is not parsed as it is being set. So any markup (such as syntax to be recognized as an entity reference) is treated as literal text, and needs to be appropriately escaped by the implementation when it is written out. In order to assign an attribute value that contains entity references, the user must create an Attr node plus any Text and EntityReference nodes, build the appropriate subtree, and use setAttributeNodeNS or setAttributeNode to assign it as the value of an attribute.

setAttributeNSnamespaceURIqualifiedNamevalue
Parameters	StringnamespaceURI The namespace URI of the attribute to create or alter. StringqualifiedName The qualified name of the attribute to create or alter. Stringvalue The value to set in string form.
Returns	void
Throws	DOMException INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR: Raised if the specified qualified name contains an illegal character. NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. NAMESPACE_ERR: Raised if the qualifiedName is malformed, if the qualifiedName has a prefix and the namespaceURI is null, if the qualifiedName has a prefix that is "xml" and the namespaceURI is different from the xml namespace, or if the qualifiedName is "xmlns" and the namespaceURI is different from the xml namespace.

setAttributeNodenewAttr
Parameters	AttrnewAttr The Attr node to add to the attribute list.
Returns	Attr. If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute, the replaced Attr node is returned, otherwise null is returned.
Throws	DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newAttr was created from a different document than the one that created the element. NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if newAttr is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.

setAttributeNodeNSnewAttr
Parameters	AttrnewAttr The Attr node to add to the attribute list.
Returns	Attr. If the newAttr attribute replaces an existing attribute with the same local name and namespace URI, the replaced Attr node is returned, otherwise null is returned.
Throws	DOMException WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR: Raised if newAttr was created from a different document than the one that created the element. NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR: Raised if this node is readonly. INUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERR: Raised if newAttr is already an attribute of another Element object. The DOM user must explicitly clone Attr nodes to re-use them in other elements.