W3cubDocs

/Web APIs

Text

Baseline Widely available *

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨July 2015⁩.

* Some parts of this feature may have varying levels of support.

The Text interface represents a text node in a DOM tree.

EventTarget Node CharacterData Text

To understand what a text node is, consider the following document:

<html lang="en" class="e">
  <head>
    <title>Aliens?</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    Why yes.
  </body>
</html>

In that document, there are five text nodes, with the following contents:

  • "\n " (after the <head> start tag, a newline followed by four spaces)
  • "Aliens?" (the contents of the title element)
  • "\n " (after the </head> end tag, a newline followed by two spaces)
  • "\n " (after the <body> start tag, a newline followed by two spaces)
  • "\n Why yes.\n \n\n" (the contents of the body element)

Each of those text nodes is an object that has the properties and methods documented in this article.

Constructor

Text()

Returns a new Text node with the parameter as its textual content.

Instance properties

Inherits properties from its parents, CharacterData, Node, and EventTarget.

Text.assignedSlot Read only

Returns a HTMLSlotElement representing the <slot> the node is inserted in.

Text.wholeText Read only

Returns a string containing the text of all Text nodes logically adjacent to this Node, concatenated in document order.

Instance methods

Inherits methods from its parent, CharacterData, Node, and EventTarget.

Text.splitText

Breaks the node into two nodes at a specified offset.

Specifications

Specification
DOM>
# interface-text>

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Opera Safari Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet WebView Android WebView on iOS
Text 29 16 24 16 8 29 24 16 8 2.0 4.4 8
Text 1 12 1 ≤12.1 1 18 4 ≤12.1 1 1.0 1 1
assignedSlot 53 79 63 40 10 53 63 41 10 6.0 53 10
getBoxQuads No No 31 No No No No No No No No No
splitText
1Before Chrome 30, the offset parameter was optional.
 12 1
≤12.1Before Opera 17, the offset parameter was optional.
1The offset parameter is optional.
18Before Chrome Android 30, the offset parameter was optional.
 4
≤12.1Before Opera 17, the offset parameter was optional.
1The offset parameter is optional.
1.0Before Samsung Internet 2.0, the offset parameter was optional.
1Before version 4.4, the offset parameter was optional.
1The offset parameter is optional.
wholeText 2 12 3.5 ≤12.1 4 18 4 ≤12.1 3.2 1.0 4.4 3.2

See also

© 2005–2025 MDN contributors.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Text