Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

nodeValue

Another property you can use to get and set the content of your document is nodeValue. The nodeValue property is just what it sounds like: the value of an attribute or text node. Assuming the following (X)HTML snippet:

<a id="easy" href="http://www.easy-designs.net">Easy Designs</a>

you could use nodeValue to get the value of the text node in the link and assign it to a variable named text:

var text = document.getElementById( 'easy' ).firstChild.nodeValue;

This property works in the other direction as well:

document.getElementById(
  'easy' ).firstChild.nodeValue = 'Easy Designs, LLC';

In the above example, we set the text of the link equal to Easy Designs, LLC, but we could just as easily have used concatenation to add the , LLC to the text:

document.getElementById( 'easy' ).firstChild.nodeValue += ', LLC';