February 2, 2002 - Naming XML Tree Nodes

Yehuda Shiran February 2, 2002
Naming XML Tree Nodes
Tips: February 2002

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
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There are twelve node types in the DOMDocument tree. The nodeName property of these nodes depends on the node type. In some node types, the nodeName property reflects a user-given name. For example, the nodeName property of the attribute node is the name of the property, as assigned by the author. In other node types, the nodeName property contains a fixed string. For example, the nodeName property of the text node contains the string "#text". The following table lists the nodeName property of all node types:

ValuenodeTypeStringnodeName
1"element"Contains the name of the XML tag, with any namespace prefix included if present.
2"attribute"Contains the name of the attribute.
3"text"Contains the literal string "#text".
4"cdatasection"Contains the literal string "#cdata-section".
5"entityreference"Contains the name of the entity referenced. Note that the name does not include the leading ampersand or the trailing semicolon. The name includes the namespace if one is present.
6"entity"Contains the name of the entity.
7"processinginstruction"Contains the target; the first token following the <? characters.
8"comment"Contains the literal string "#comment".
9"document"Contains the literal string "#document".
10"documenttype"Contains the name of the document type; for example, xxx in <!DOCTYPE xxx ...>.
11"documentfragment"Contains the literal string "#document-fragment".
12"notation"Contains the name of the notation.