CharacterData: data property

The data property of the CharacterData interface represent the value of the current object's data.

Value

A string with the character information contained in the CharacterData node.

When set to the null value, that null value is converted to the empty string (""), so cd.data = null is equivalent to cd.data = "".

Example

Note: CharacterData is an abstract interface. The examples below use two concrete interfaces implementing it, Text and Comment.

Reading a comment using data

html
<!-- This is an HTML comment -->
<output id="result"></output>
js
const comment = document.body.childNodes[1];
const output = document.getElementById("result");

output.value = comment.data;

Setting the content of a text node using data

html
<span>Result: </span>Not set.
js
const span = document.querySelector("span");
const textNode = span.nextSibling;

textNode.data = "This text has been set using 'textNode.data'.";

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# dom-characterdata-data

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also