XML Unleashed

Accessing Nodes in DOM

There are two ways to get at a node in DOM. You can either walk the tree or access the node directly by name. In practice, a document is accessed using a combination of both methods.

Walking the Tree

To walk DOM tree, start anywhere in the tree and use the following methods of DOM node interface:

• parentNode(). This method will access the parent node.

• firstChild(). This method will access the first child of the node. If there is no such node, null is returned.

• nextSibling(). This method accesses the next sibling node. If no such node exists, null is returned.

• previousSibling(). This method accesses the previous sibling node. If no such node exists, null is returned.

It is easy to see how you can move throughout ...