Microsoft DOM Objects Reference

length

Is a member of:

XMLDOMNodeList XMLDOMNamedNodeMap XMLDOMComment XMLDOMText

Syntax

lngValue = objXMLDOMNodeList.length

Remark

This property is read-only.

Depending on the DOM object, the length property is used as follows:

For the XMLDOMNodeList and XMLDOMNamedNodeMap interfaces, the length property specifies the number of child Nodes in its collection. We use this property often to verify that an object has been loaded properly, by checking if the length property of the object is greater than zero.

For the XMLDOMComment and XMLDOMText interfaces, the length property returns the number of characters in the body of the Node.

Example

In this example, we test the length to see if a DOMDocument has loaded properly. If the length is greater than zero, then we can proceed with the rest of the code for working with the DOMDocument object.

Dim objDOMDocument As DOMDocument

Dim objNode As IXMLDOMNode

Set objDOMDocument = New DOMDocument

objDOMDocument.async = False

objDOMDocument.Load "http://localhost/xmlcode/people2.dtd"

If objDOMDocument.childNodes.length > 0 Then

`run rest of code here

End If

¬ Our code has loaded the XML from our main example. The length returns 4, as there are 4 childNodes for this DOMDocument.

This manuscript is an abridged version of a chapter from the Manning Publications book XML Programming with VB and ASP. This chapter looks at the Microsoft DOM objects. NOTE: Most images have been removed to increase speed and many of the code comments have also been removed for presentation. Please purchase the book to enjoy the full experience of all the chapters with images and code comments!