XML DOM lastChild Attribute

Element Object

Definition and Usage

lastChild This property returns the last child node of the selected element.

If the selected node has no child nodes, this property returns NULL.

Syntax

elementNode.lastChild
Tips and Notes

Note:Firefox and most other browsers treat whitespace or newlines as text nodes, while Internet Explorer does not. Therefore, in the following example, we use a function to check the node type of the last child node.

Element nodes have a nodeType of 1, so if the last child node is not an element node, it moves to the previous node and checks if that node is an element node. This continues until the last child node (which must be an element node) is found. This ensures that the result is correct in all browsers.

Tip:For more information on differences between browsers, please visit the DOM Browsers section in the XML DOM tutorial.

Example

The following code loads "books.xml" into xmlDoc and gets the last child node: 
var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
   if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) {
       myFunction(this);
   }
};
xhttp.open("GET", "books.xml", true);
xhttp.send();
// Checks if the last node is an element node
function get_lastchild(n) {
    var x = n.lastChild;
    while (x.nodeType != 1) {
        x = x.previousSibling;
    }
    return x;
}
function myFunction(xml) {
    var x, i, txt, firstNode, xmlDoc;
    xmlDoc = xml.responseXML;
    x = xmlDoc.documentElement;
    txt = "";
    firstNode = get_lastchild(x);
    for (i = 0; i < firstNode.childNodes.length; i++) {
        if (firstNode.childNodes[i].nodeType == 1) {
            // Only handles element nodes
            txt += firstNode.childNodes[i].nodeName +"}}"
            " = " +
            firstNode.childNodes[i].childNodes[0].nodeValue + "<br>";
        }
    }
    document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = txt;
}

Try It Yourself

Element Object