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Returns a new NodeIterator object.

Syntax

var nodeIterator = document.createNodeIterator(root, whatToShow, filter);

Values

root
The root node at which to begin the NodeIterator's traversal.
whatToShow Optional
Is an optional unsigned long representing a bitmask created by combining the constant properties of NodeFilter. It is a convenient way of filtering for certain types of node. It defaults to 0xFFFFFFFF representing the SHOW_ALL constant.
Constant Numerical value Description
NodeFilter.SHOW_ALL -1 (that is the max value of unsigned long) Shows all nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_ATTRIBUTE 2 Shows attribute Attr nodes. This is meaningful only when creating a TreeWalker with an Attr node as its root; in this case, it means that the attribute node will appear in the first position of the iteration or traversal. Since attributes are never children of other nodes, they do not appear when traversing over the document tree.
NodeFilter.SHOW_CDATA_SECTION 8 Shows CDATASection nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_COMMENT 128 Shows Comment nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_DOCUMENT 256 Shows Document nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT 1024 Shows DocumentFragment nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_DOCUMENT_TYPE 512 Shows DocumentType nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_ELEMENT 1 Shows Element nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_ENTITY 32 Shows Entity nodes. This is meaningful only when creating a TreeWalker with an Entity node as its root; in this case, it means that the Entity node will appear in the first position of the traversal. Since entities are not part of the document tree, they do not appear when traversing over the document tree.
NodeFilter.SHOW_ENTITY_REFERENCE 16 Shows EntityReference nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_NOTATION 2048 Shows Notation nodes. This is meaningful only when creating a TreeWalker with a Notation node as its root; in this case, it means that the Notation node will appear in the first position of the traversal. Since entities are not part of the document tree, they do not appear when traversing over the document tree.
NodeFilter.SHOW_PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION 64 Shows ProcessingInstruction nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT 4 Shows Text nodes.
filter Optional
An object implementing the NodeFilter interface; its acceptNode() method will be called for each node in the subtree based at root which is accepted as included by the whatToShow flag to determine whether or not to include it in the list of iterable nodes (a simple callback function may also be used instead). The method should return one of NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT, NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT, or NodeFilter.FILTER_SKIP. See the Example.
Note: Prior to Gecko 12.0 (Firefox 12.0 / Thunderbird 12.0 / SeaMonkey 2.9), this method accepted an optional fourth parameter (entityReferenceExpansion) that is not part of the DOM4 specification, and has therefore been removed. This parameter indicated whether or not the children of entity reference nodes were visible to the iterator. Since such nodes were never created in browsers, this paramater had no effect.

Example

var nodeIterator = document.createNodeIterator(
    document.body,
    NodeFilter.SHOW_ELEMENT,
    function(node) {
        return node.nodeName.toLowerCase() === 'p' ? NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT : NodeFilter.FILTER_REJECT;
    }
);
var pars = [];
var currentNode;

while (currentNode = nodeIterator.nextNode()) {
  pars.push(currentNode);
}

Browser Compatibility

Supported in FF 3.5+, Chrome 1+, Opera 9+, Safari 3+, IE9+

See Also

Specifications

DOM Level 2 Traversal: NodeIterator

Document Tags and Contributors

 Last updated by: bakotaco,