Nodes aren't just elements...

Caught myself thinking that. So to set my mind right:

According to the DOM, everything in an XML document is a node.

The DOM says:

• The entire document is a document node
• Every XML element is an element node
• The text in the XML elements are text nodes
• Every attribute is an attribute node
• Comments are comment nodes

Text is Always Stored in Text Nodes

A common error in DOM processing is to expect an element node to contain text.

However, the text of an element node is stored in a text node.

In this example: <year>2005</year>, the element node <year>, holds a text node with the value "2005".

"2005" is not the value of the <year> element!

This is exacerbated by JavaScript referring to nodeValue ....