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Cover image for JavaScript DOM - Part 4 - innerHTML vs innerText vs textContent [video + article]
Tharun Shiv
Tharun Shiv

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Textcontent vs Innerhtml JavaScript DOM - Part 4 - innerHTML vs innerText vs textContent [video + article]

This is going to be a multi-part Video + article tutorial series on JavaScript DOM. You're reading Part 4

You can read Part 3 here:

innerText | innerHTML | textContent

All three of them are attributes that you can get from the elements. They are not the same and we will be looking at how they are different with the below illustrations.

innerText

When applied to an element, it returns only the text which is inside the element, the text part wrapped by the element and nothing else, it also ignores the space.

syntax:

element.innerText
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example:

<p id="experiment">
  <br />
  Hello this is <span>Tharun</span> How are you?
  <br />
</p>
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let p = document.getElementById('experiment');
console.log(p.innerText)
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output

"
Hello this is Tharun How are you?
"
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innerHTML

When applied to an element, it returns the text part enclosed by the element, along with the HTML tags inside, and also considers the spacing given inside. Look at the example below.

syntax:

element.innerHTML
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example:

<p id="experiment">
  <br />
  Hello this is <span>Tharun</span> How are you?
  <br />
</p>
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let p = document.getElementById('experiment');
console.log(p.innerHTML)
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output

"
  <br>
  Hello this is <span>Tharun<span/> How are you?
  <br>
"
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textContent

When applied to an element, it returns the text part enclosed by the element and considers the spacing given inside. Look at the example below.

syntax:

element.textContent
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example:

<p id="experiment">
  <br />
  Hello this is <span>Tharun</span> How are you?
  <br />
</p>
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let p = document.getElementById('experiment');
console.log(p.textContent)
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output

"

  Hello this is Tharun How are you?

"
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So these are the main differences between these three that you need to know.
You can access and do a lot more magic by grabbing the elements. We will explore and do stuff in this series.

Next Part coming tomorrow, where we discuss about how you can get multiple elements by using getElementsByClassName.

Thank you for reading 😊

Considering Subscribing to my YouTube Channel if you like the Video content: https://youtube.com/c/developerTharun

Written by,

Thank you for reading, This is Tharun Shiv a.k.a Developer Tharun

Tharun Shiv

Top comments (7)

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venkat121998 profile image
venkat anirudh

These differences were always confusing. Good article. Now I get it. 👍

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developertharun profile image
Tharun Shiv

thank you, glad it helped

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chandrika56 profile image
Jaya chandrika reddy

Yeah, same here

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developertharun profile image
Tharun Shiv

thank you, glad it helped

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chandrika56 profile image
Jaya chandrika reddy

Good series.. Looking forward for more

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developertharun profile image
Tharun Shiv

Sure, 10 more parts to the series, then we move on to the project 😊

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digvijaysingh21 profile image
digvijaysingh21

please add here only 6 are here