Swinging from the DOM Tree

When you first start delving into the Document Object Model (DOM), it can be somewhat daunting. A simple HTML page can become quite complex quickly. So I thought I would share some terminology pertaining to the DOM that might speed up grasping DOM concepts.

• Tree – The term tree is often used to refer to the DOM. You might hear the phrase, ‘DOM Tree’. It is in reference to its hierarchal structure that couls be depicted as a tree with all its branches and leaves.
• Node – Nodes are the ‘leaves’ on the DOM tree. Each HTML element is considered a node. For example, a paragraph tag (<p>) would be a node.
  • Each node has a type
    • Document
    • Element (HTML tag)
    • Text
    • Attribute
  • Nodes can be parents and/or children
    • Example: <p>This is my text</p>
    • In the above example, there are two nodes…the p tag element node and the text node within the p tag.The p tag element node is the parent node of the text node while the text node is considered the child node of the p tag element.

In a future post, I will discuss some of the properties and methods of the DOM that we can utilize in our programming.

Happy Coding!

Clay Hess