document.createTreeWalker

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

Syntax

treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker(root, whatToShow, filter, entityReferenceExpansion);

Parameters

root

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

whatToShow Optional

Is an optional 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	Shows Entity nodes. This is meaningful only when creating a TreeWalker with an Entity node as its root; in this case, it means that the Entity node will appear in the first position of the traversal. Since entities are not part of the document tree, they do not appear when traversing over the document tree.
NodeFilter.SHOW_ENTITY_REFERENCE	16	Shows EntityReference nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_NOTATION	2048	Shows Notation nodes. This is meaningful only when creating a TreeWalker with a Notation node as its root; in this case, it means that the Notation node will appear in the first position of the traversal. Since entities are not part of the document tree, they do not appear when traversing over the document tree.
NodeFilter.SHOW_PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION	64	Shows ProcessingInstruction nodes.
NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT	4	Shows Text nodes.

filter Optional

Is an optional 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.

entityReferenceExpansion Optional

Is a Boolean flag indicating if when discarding an EntityReference its whole sub-tree must be discarded at the same time.

Example

The following example goes through all nodes in the body, reduces the set of nodes to elements, simply passes through as acceptable each node (it could reduce the set in the acceptNode() method instead), 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 = [];

while(treeWalker.nextNode()) nodeList.push(treeWalker.currentNode);

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
DOM The definition of 'Document.createTreeWalker' in that specification.	Living Standard	Removed the expandEntityReferences parameter. Made the whatToShow and filter parameters optionals.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Traversal and Range Specification The definition of 'Document.createTreeWalker' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

See also

• The interface of the object it creates: TreeWalker.
• createTreeWalker on MSDN