Safest way to detect native DOM element?

Asked Feb 02 '12 at 20:50

Active Feb 02 '12 at 20:50

Viewed 57 times

Possible Duplicate:
Javascript isDOM — How do you check if a Javascript Object is a DOM Object?

What is a safest technique for checking if an unknown variable is a native DOM element? Both of these seem to work:

// instanceof
function isElementInstance(ukn) {
    return ukn instanceof Element;
}

// nodeType
function isElementNode(ukn) {
    return 1 === ukn.nodeType;
}

edited May 23 '17 at 11:48

Community

asked Feb 02 '12 at 20:50

ryanve

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The second method will fail if `ukn` isn't a DOM node of any kind. – millimoose Feb 02 '12 at 20:54
1

I'd do the `obj.nodeType === 1` check... – Šime Vidas Feb 02 '12 at 20:55
3

@Inerdial If the object is not a DOM node, `ukn.nodeType` evaluates to `undefined`, so the function returns `false`. How is that a fail? – Šime Vidas Feb 02 '12 at 20:56
by 'safe' do you mean it will always be correct, or is the code reliable (unlikely to error)? – Hamish Feb 02 '12 at 20:56
@Hamish Most reliable / best compatibility. – ryanve Feb 02 '12 at 20:58
@ŠimeVidas Oh, you're right, my bad. – millimoose Feb 02 '12 at 21:00
Course, if the object just *happens* to be, say, a tree node of some other sort, it could have its own `nodeType` that has nothing to do with the DOM. You need to be able to deal with that case. – cHao Feb 02 '12 at 21:04
`nodeType` is faster http://jsperf.com/detect-native-dom-element-via-notetype-vs-instanceof – ryanve Feb 02 '12 at 21:22

Safest way to detect native DOM element?

0 Answers0