Fast way to find a text node element in DOM tree?

[Robert Oschler]

What's a good way to find a specific text node element in a web page's DOM
tree? I thought of traversing each node but there has to be a faster way.
Is there a "find text node by nodeValue" function or something? I do know
the nodeValue (text string) of the text node.

Thanks.

 

[RobG]

What's a good way to find a specific text node element in a web page's DOM
tree? I thought of traversing each node but there has to be a faster way.
Is there a "find text node by nodeValue" function or something? I do know
the nodeValue (text string) of the text node.

What property do you intend to use to find it? It it selected by the
user? clicked on? a navigable element such as an anchor, link or input?

Using 'find by value' may be a tad difficult if you don't know the value
to find by.

 

[Robert Oschler]

What property do you intend to use to find it? It it selected by the
user? clicked on? a navigable element such as an anchor, link or input?

Using 'find by value' may be a tad difficult if you don't know the value
to find by.

RobG,

Property? The nodeValue. For a text node element the text is stored in the
nodeValue property. I'm just trying to find a way to either get a
collection of only text nodes, so I can scan their nodeValue's, or anything
that saves me from traversing the whole DOM tree.

Thanks.

 

[Martin Honnen]

Property? The nodeValue. For a text node element the text is stored in the
nodeValue property. I'm just trying to find a way to either get a
collection of only text nodes, so I can scan their nodeValue's, or anything
that saves me from traversing the whole DOM tree.

Mozilla could do it using its XPath on HTML implementation, Mozilla and
Opera 8 should be able to do it using a TreeWalker, and Opera 8 also
implements NodeIterator
(<http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Traversal-Range/traversal.html>). So
with those browsers you have options to look only at text nodes if needed.
IE does not have any W3C DOM Level 2 traversal but it has an
implementation of text searching within text ranges and then you can
expand the range to the parent element.