Node: nodeValue property

The nodeValue property of the Node interface returns or sets the value of the current node.

Value

A string containing the value of the current node, if any. For the document itself, nodeValue returns null. For text, comment, and CDATA nodes, nodeValue returns the content of the node. For attribute nodes, the value of the attribute is returned.

The following table shows the return values for different types of nodes.

Node Value of nodeValue
CDATASection Content of the CDATA section
Comment Content of the comment
Document null
DocumentFragment null
DocumentType null
Element null
NamedNodeMap null
ProcessingInstruction Entire content excluding the target
Text Content of the text node

Note: When nodeValue is defined to be null, setting it has no effect.

Example

html
<div id="d1">Hello world</div>
<!-- Example of comment -->
<output id="result">Not calculated yet.</output>

and the following script:

js
let node = document.querySelector("body").firstChild;
let result = "<br/>Node names are:<br/>";
while (node) {
  result += `Value of ${node.nodeName}: ${node.nodeValue}<br/>`;
  node = node.nextSibling;
}

const output = document.getElementById("result");
output.innerHTML = result;

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# dom-node-nodevalue

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser