Node

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The Node Utility provides an expressive way to collect, create, and manipulate DOM nodes. Each Node instance represents an underlying DOM node, and each NodeList represents a collection of DOM nodes. With Node, you can manage classNames (myNode.addClass('foo')) and styles (myNode.setStyle('opacity', 0.5)), create elements (Y.Node.create('<div id="foo" class="foo"><p>foo</p></div>')), and much more.

Note: The method Y.get has been deprecated in favor of Y.one. The methods Node::query and Node::queryAll have been deprecated in favor of Node::one and Node::all To continue using the deprecated methods, you will need to use('node-deprecated').

Getting Started

To include the source files for Node and its dependencies, first load the YUI seed file if you haven't already loaded it.

<script src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.4.0/build/yui/yui-min.js"></script>

Next, create a new YUI instance for your application and populate it with the modules you need by specifying them as arguments to the YUI().use() method. YUI will automatically load any dependencies required by the modules you specify.

// Create a new YUI instance and populate it with the required modules.
YUI().use('node', function (Y) {
    // Node is available and ready for use. Add implementation
    // code here.
});

For more information on creating YUI instances and on the use() method, see the documentation for the YUI Global object.

Using Node

Getting a Node

Node is the interface for DOM operations in YUI 3. The Node API is based on the standard DOM API, and provides additional sugar properties and methods that make common operations easier, and implementation code more concise. Developers familiar with the standard DOM API will find Node instances to be very familiar.

The simplest way to get a Node instance is using your YUI instance's one method. Y.one accepts either an existing DOM element or a selector query. If a selector query is used, the first matching element is used.

Note: CSS3 selector support is not included by default with Node, you will need to include the "selector-css3" module for CSS3 support.

This example demonstrates two ways to get a node instance.

var node1 = Y.one('#main');
var node2 = Y.one(document.body);

Accessing Node Properties

Properties of the underlying DOM node are accessed via the Y.Node instance's set and get methods. For simple property types (strings, numbers, booleans), these pass directly to/from the underlying node, but properties that normally return DOM nodes return Y.Node instances instead.

This is an example of getting and setting various properties.

var node = Y.one('#foo');
var parent = node.get('parentNode'); // Node instance

var html = 'I am "' + node.get('id') + '".';
html += 'My parent is "' + parent.get('id') + '"';

node.set('innerHTML', html);

DOM Events

Use the on method to add an event listener to a Node instance. The event object passed as the first argument to each listener is an event facade that, like the Node API, normalizes browser differences and provides a standard API for working with DOM events based on the W3C standard. All properties of the event object that would normally return DOM elements return Y.Node instances.

Y.one('#demo').on('click', function(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    alert('event: ' + e.type + ' target: ' + e.target.get('tagName')); 
});

DOM Methods

The Y.Node API provides all of the DOM methods you would expect, plus a few extras to help with common tasks. As with properties and events, any methods that would normally return DOM nodes instead return Y.Node instances.

var node = Y.one('#demo');
var node2 = node.appendChild(Y.one('#foo p'));
node2.addClass('bar');

Using NodeList

The Y.NodeList provides a node-like interface for manipulating multiple nodes through a single interface. The NodeList API is a pared-down version of the Node API, allowing for batching of common tasks.

The Y.all method is the simplest way to get a NodeList.

Y.all('#demo li').addClass('bar');

The Y.Node api returns NodeList instances when the DOM would normally return a collection of elements.

Y.one('#demo').get('children').addClass('bar');

Node Queries

Selector queries are a powerful way to test and manipulate nodes. All Y.Node instances support one, all, and test.

var node = Y.one('#demo');

var node2 = node.one('p');
if (node2) { // might be null
    node2.addClass('bar'); // adds "bar" to the first paragraph descendant of #demo
}

node.all('p').addClass('bar'); // adds "bar" to all paragraph descendants of #demo

if (node.test('.foo.bar')) { // "if node has both foo and bar classNames"
    node.removeClass('bar');
}

For more information on selector queries, see the following W3C specifications:

Note: CSS3 selector support is not included by default with Node, you will need to include the "selector-css3" module for CSS3 support.

ARIA Support

The Node interface has support for ARIA. When used with Node's built-in support for CSS selector queries, it is easy to both apply and manage a Node's roles, states and properties.

The ARIA Roles, States and Properties enhance the semantics of HTML, allowing developers to more accurately describe the intended purpose of a region of a page, or a DHTML widget, thereby improving the user experience for users of assistive technology, such as screen readers.

Apply any of the ARIA Roles, States and Properties via the set method. For example, to apply the role of toolbar to a &#60;div&#62; with an id of "toolbar":

var node = Y.one('#toolbar').set('role', 'toolbar');

Node's built-in support for CSS selector queries, method chaining, and ability to set multiple attributes on a single Node instance makes it especially easy to apply the ARIA Roles, States, and Properties when building DHTML widgets with a large subtree. For example, when building a menubar widget it is necessary to apply a role of menubar to the root DOM element representing the menubar, and the role of menu to the root DOM element representing each submenu. Additionally, as each submenu is hidden by default, the aria-hidden state will need to be applied to each submenu as well. The Node interface makes it possible to do all of this in one line of code:

var node = Y.one('#rootmenu').set('role', 'menubar'),
    nodes = node.all('.menu');
    
nodes.setAttrs({ role: 'menu', 'aria-hidden': true });

Migration Table

The following table is included to help users migrating from YUI 2. Most of the functionality from YAHOO.util.Dom is available via Node.

Note In the snippets below, myNode is an instance of Node. Methods that normally would return DOM nodes now return Node instances.

2.x (via YAHOO.util.Dom) 3.0
addClass myNode.addClass
batch NodeList[methodName], NodeList.each, or Y.each
generateId Y.guid
get Y.one Note strings are now treated as selectors (e.g. "Y.one('#foo')" vs. "YAHOO.util.Dom.get('foo')")
getAncestorBy myNode.ancestor
getAncestorByClassName myNode.ancestor
getAncestorByTagName myNode.ancestor
getChildren myNode.get('children')
getChildrenBy myNode.all
getClientRegion myNode.get('viewportRegion')
getDocumentHeight myNode.get('docHeight')
getDocumentScrollLeft myNode.get('docScrollX')
getDocumentScrollTop myNode.get('docScrollY')
getDocumentWidth myNode.get('docWidth')
getElementsBy myNode.all
getElementsByClassName myNode.all
getFirstChild myNode.one
getFirstChildBy myNode.one
getLastChild myNode.one
getLastChildBy myNode.one
getNextSibling myNode.next
getNextSiblingBy myNode.next
getPreviousSibling myNode.previous
getPreviousSiblingBy myNode.previous
getRegion myNode.get('region')
getStyle myNode.getStyle
getViewportHeight myNode.get('winHeight')
getViewportWidth myNode.get('winWidth')
getX myNode.getXY
getY myNode.getXY
getXY myNode.getXY
hasClass myNode.hasClass
inDocument myNode.inDoc
insertAfter myNode.insert
insertBefore myNode.insert
isAncestor myNode.contains (Note myNode.contains(myNode) === true)
removeClass myNode.removeClass
replaceClass myNode.replaceClass
setStyle myNode.setStyle
setX myNode.setXY
setY myNode.setXY
setXY myNode.setXY