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Node: contains() method

The contains() method of the Node interface returns a boolean value indicating whether a node is a descendant of a given node, that is the node itself, one of its direct children (childNodes), one of the children's direct children, and so on.

Note: A node is contained inside itself.

Syntax

js

contains(otherNode)

Parameters

otherNode

The Node to test with.

Note: otherNode is not optional, but can be set to null.

Return value

A boolean value that is true if otherNode is contained in the node, false if not.

If the otherNode parameter is null, contains() always returns false.

Example

This function checks to see if an element is in the page's body. As contains is inclusive and determining if the body contains itself isn't the intention of isInPage this case explicitly returns false.

js

function isInPage(node) {
  return node === document.body ? false : document.body.contains(node);
}

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari WebView Android Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet
contains 16 12 9
9Only supported for HTMLElement, not all Node objects.
7 1.1 4.4 18 9 10.1 1 1.0

See also

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https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Node/contains