DOM nodetype

tdatu · March 18th, 2011, 02:47 PM

hello there,

Just a quick question on chapter 12 example 2:
I get the idea of navigating the DOM tree structure,
but can please elaborate on the conditional statement such as:

Code:

if (headElement.nextSibling.nodeType == 3)
{
 bodyElement = headElement.nextSibling.nextSibling;
}

What I think I know:
The statement above is for browsers that consider a "whitespace" a node.
That's why there are "nextSibling.nextSibling" for the purpose of skipping whitespace?

If so,
The integer value 3 (according to Appendix C) is TEXT_NODE, and white space is considered a TEXT_NODE?

Thanks,
tdatu

jmcpeak · March 18th, 2011, 07:33 PM

Howdy, tdatu.

Yes, nextSibling.nextSibling is for browsers that count whitespace in between elements as a node in the DOM. To answer your second question, yes, whitespace is text in the DOM.