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Obsolete
This feature is obsolete. Although it may still work in some browsers, its use is discouraged since it could be removed at any time. Try to avoid using it.

The Node.localName read-only property returns the local part of the qualified name of this node.

In DOM4 this API was moved from Node to the Element and Attr interfaces.

Syntax

name = element.localName
  • name is the local name as a string (see Notes below for details)

Example

(Must be served with XML content type, such as text/xml or application/xhtml+xml.)

<html xmlns="https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:svg="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<head>
  <script type="application/javascript"><![CDATA[
  function test() {
    var text = document.getElementById('text');
    var circle = document.getElementById('circle');
    
    text.value = "<svg:circle> has:\n" +
                 "localName = '" + circle.localName + "'\n" +
                 "namespaceURI = '" + circle.namespaceURI + "'";
  }
  ]]></script>
</head>
<body onload="test()">
  <svg:svg version="1.1"
    width="100px" height="100px"
    viewBox="0 0 100 100">
    <svg:circle cx="50" cy="50" r="30" style="fill:#aaa" id="circle"/>
  </svg:svg>
  <textarea id="text" rows="4" cols="55"/>
</body>
</html>

Notes

The local name of a node is that part of the node's qualified name that comes after the colon. Qualified names are typically used in XML as part of the namespace(s) of the particular XML documents. For example, in the qualified name ecomm:partners, partners is the local name and ecomm is the prefix:

<ecomm:business id="soda_shop" type="brick_n_mortar" xmlns:ecomm="https://example.com/ecomm">
  <ecomm:partners>
    <ecomm:partner id="1001">Tony's Syrup Warehouse
    </ecomm:partner>
  </ecomm:partner>
</ecomm:business>

Note: In Gecko 1.9.2 and earlier, the property returns the upper-cased version of the local name for HTML elements in HTML DOMs (as opposed to XHTML elements in XML DOMs). In later versions, in compliance with HTML5, the property returns in the case of the internal DOM storage, which is lower case for both HTML elements in HTML DOMs and XHTML elements in XML DOMs. The tagName property continues to return in the upper case for HTML elements in HTML DOMs.

For nodes of any type other than ELEMENT_NODE and ATTRIBUTE_NODE localName is always null.

Specifications

Specification Status Comment
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification
The definition of 'Node.localName' in that specification.		 Recommendation  
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core Specification
The definition of 'Node.localName' in that specification.		 Recommendation Initial definition

Browser compatibility

Feature Chrome Firefox (Gecko) Internet Explorer Opera Safari
Basic support (Yes)
No support46.0[1]		 1.0 (1.7 or earlier)
No support 48.0 (48.0)[1]		 ? ? ?
Feature Android Firefox Mobile (Gecko) IE Mobile Opera Mobile Safari Mobile
Basic support ? 1.0 (1.0)
No support 48.0 (48.0)[1]		 ? ? ?

[1] This API was moved to the Element and Attr APIs according to the DOM4 standard.

See also

Document Tags and Contributors

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 Contributors to this page: Sebastianz, jpmedley, fscholz, teoli, kscarfone, khushboo_Dwivedi, gurdev_singh, Sheppy, ethertank, trevorh, ziyunfei, Hsivonen, Mgjbot, Taken, Nickolay, Ptak82, Dria, Callek, JesseW
 Last updated by: Sebastianz,