Node.nodeName

The nodeName read-only property returns the name of the current Node as a string.

var str = node.nodeName;

A DOMString. Values for the different types of nodes are:

Given the following markup:

<div id="d1">hello world</div>
<input type="text" id="t">

and the following script:

var div1 = document.getElementById("d1");
var text_field = document.getElementById("t");

text_field.value = div1.nodeName;

In XHTML (or any other XML format), text_field's value would read "div". However, in HTML, text_field's value would read "DIV", because nodeName and tagName return in upper case on HTML elements in DOMs flagged as HTML documents. Read more details on nodeName case sensitivity in different browsers.

Note that the Element.tagName property could have been used instead, since nodeName has the same value as tagName for an element. Bear in mind, however, that nodeName will return "#text" for text nodes while tagName will return undefined.