Properties and methods of the document object

The following table details the properties and methods of the document object that are taken from DOM Level 1 and used in Adobe Dreamweaver. A bullet () marks read-only properties.

Property or method

Return value

nodeType 
Node.DOCUMENT_NODE
parentNode 
null
parentWindow 

The JavaScript object that corresponds to the document's parent window. (This property is not included in DOM Level 1; however, Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 supports it.)

childNodes 

A NodeList that contains all the immediate children of the document object. Typically the document has a single child, the HTML object.

documentElement 

The JavaScript object that corresponds to the HTML tag. This property is shorthand for getting the value of document.childNodes and extracting the HTML tag from the NodeList.

body 

The JavaScript object that corresponds to the BODY tag. This property is shorthand for calling document.documentElement.childNodes and extracting the BODY tag from the NodeList. For frameset documents, this property returns the node for the outermost frameset.

URL 

The file://URL for the document or, if the file has not been saved, an empty string.

getElementsByTagName(tagName)

A NodeList that can be used to step through tags of type tagName (for example, IMG, DIV, and so on).

If the tag argument is LAYER, the function returns all LAYER and ILAYER tags and all absolutely positioned DIV and SPAN tags.

If the tag argument is INPUT, the function returns all form elements. (If a name attribute is specified for one or more tagName objects, it must begin with a letter, which the HTML 4.01 specification requires, or the length of the array that this function returns is incorrect.)

hasChildNodes()
true