HTML DOM Element textContent
Examples
Return the text content of an element:
let text = element.textContent;
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Change the textual content of a <p> element with id="demo":
element.textContent = "I have changed!";
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Get all the textual content of an <ul> element with id="myList":
let text = document.getElementById("myList").textContent;
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Description
The textContent property sets or returns the text content of the specified node,
and all its descendants.
Note
When you set the textContent property, all child nodes are removed and replaced by only one new text node.
See Also:
The Differences Between
innerHTML, innerText and textContent
See below
Syntax
Return the text content of a node:
element.textContent
node.textContent
Set the text content of a node:
element.textContent = text
node.textContent = text
Property Value
Property
Description
text
The text content of the element or node.
Return Value
Type
Description
String The text content of the element and all its descendants.
Returns
Returns
null if the element is a document, a document type, or a notation.
The Differences Between
innerHTML, innerText and textContent
The innerHTML property returns:
The text content of the element, including all spacing and inner HTML tags.
The text content of the element, including all spacing and inner HTML tags.
The innerText property returns:
Just the text content of the element and all its children, without CSS hidden text spacing and tags, except <script> and <style> elements.
Just the text content of the element and all its children, without CSS hidden text spacing and tags, except <script> and <style> elements.
The textContent property returns:
The text content of the element and all descendants, with spacing and CSS hidden text, but without tags.
The text content of the element and all descendants, with spacing and CSS hidden text, but without tags.
HTML Example
<p id="myP"> This element has extra spacing and contains <span>a span
element</span>.</p>
JavaScript Examples
let text = document.getElementById("myP").innerText;
let text = document.getElementById("myP").innerHTML;
let text = document.getElementById("demo").textContent;
Try it Yourself »
let text = document.getElementById("myP").innerHTML;
let text = document.getElementById("demo").textContent;
In the example above:
The innerText property returns:
This element has extra spacing and contains a span element.
This element has extra spacing and contains a span element.
The innerHTML property returns:
This element has extra spacing and contains <span>a span element</span>.
This element has extra spacing and contains <span>a span element</span>.
The textContent property returns:
This element has extra spacing and contains a span element.
This element has extra spacing and contains a span element.
Browser Support
element.textContent is a DOM Level 3 (2004) feature.
It is fully supported in all modern browsers:
| Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Safari | Opera | IE |
| Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 11 |