The Node interface is the primary datatype for the entire Document Object Model. It represents a single node in the document tree. While all objects implementing the Node interface expose methods for dealing with children, not all objects implementing the Node interface may have children. For example, Text nodes may not have children, and adding children to such nodes results in a DOMException being raised.

The attributes nodeName, nodeValue and attributes are included as a mechanism to get at node information without casting down to the specific derived interface. In cases where there is no obvious mapping of these attributes for a specific nodeType (e.g., nodeValue for an Element or attributes for a Comment ), this returns null. Note that the specialized interfaces may contain additional and more convenient mechanisms to get and set the relevant information.

The values of nodeName, nodeValue, and attributes vary according to the node type as follows:

Interface	nodeName	nodeValue	attributes
Attr	same as Attr.name	same as Attr.value	null
CDATASection	"#cdata-section"	same as CharacterData.data, the content of the CDATA Section	null
Comment	"#comment"	same as CharacterData.data, the content of the comment	null
Document	"#document"	null	null
DocumentFragment	"#document-fragment"	null	null
DocumentType	same as DocumentType.name	null	null
Element	same as Element.tagName	null	NamedNodeMap
Entity	entity name	null	null
EntityReference	name of entity referenced	null	null
Notation	notation name	null	null
ProcessingInstruction	same as ProcessingInstruction.target	same as ProcessingInstruction.data	null
Text	"#text"	same as CharacterData.data, the content of the text node	null

See also the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification.