Document.createTreeWalker()

The Document.createTreeWalker() creator method returns a newly created TreeWalker object.

Syntax

document.createTreeWalker(root[, whatToShow[, filter[, expandEntityReferences]]]);

Parameters

root

A root Node of this TreeWalker traversal. Typically this will be an element owned by the document.

whatToShow Optional

A unsigned long representing a bitmask created by combining the constant properties of NodeFilter. It is a convenient way of filtering for certain types of node. It defaults to 0xFFFFFFFF representing the SHOW_ALL constant.

Constant	Numerical value	Description
NodeFilter.SHOW_ALL	-1 (that is the max value of unsigned long)	Shows all nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_ATTRIBUTE	2	Shows attribute Attr nodes. This is meaningful only when creating a TreeWalker with an Attr node as its root; in this case, it means that the attribute node will appear in the first position of the iteration or traversal. Since attributes are never children of other nodes, they do not appear when traversing over the document tree.
NodeFilter.SHOW_CDATA_SECTION	8	Shows CDATASection nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_COMMENT	128	Shows Comment nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_DOCUMENT	256	Shows Document nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT	1024	Shows DocumentFragment nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_DOCUMENT_TYPE	512	Shows DocumentType nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_ELEMENT	1	Shows Element nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_ENTITY	32	Legacy, no more usable.
NodeFilter.SHOW_ENTITY_REFERENCE	16	Legacy, no more usable.
NodeFilter.SHOW_NOTATION	2048	Legacy, no more usable.
NodeFilter.SHOW_PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION	64	Shows ProcessingInstruction nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT	4	Shows Text nodes.

filter Optional

A NodeFilter, that is an object with a method acceptNode, which is called by the TreeWalker to determine whether or not to accept a node that has passed the whatToShow check.

expandEntityReferences Optional

A boolean flag indicating if when discarding an entity reference its whole sub-tree must be discarded at the same time.

Return value

A new TreeWalker object.

Example

The following example goes through all nodes in the body, filters out any non nodes that aren't elements (with the `NodeFilter.SHOW_ELEMENT` value), marks each remaining node as acceptable (The acceptNode() method could make a different decision.), and then makes use of tree walker iterator that is created to advance through the nodes (now all elements) and push them into an array.

var treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker(
  document.body,
  NodeFilter.SHOW_ELEMENT,
  { acceptNode: function(node) { return NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT; } },
  false
);

var nodeList = [];
var currentNode = treeWalker.currentNode;

while(currentNode) {
  nodeList.push(currentNode);
  currentNode = treeWalker.nextNode();
}

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• The interface of the object it creates: TreeWalker.