What is the difference between children and childNodes in JavaScript?

In JavaScript, both children and childNodes are properties used to retrieve the child nodes of an element, but the key distinction lies in the types of nodes they return.

1. childNodes

The childNodes property returns a NodeList containing all child nodes of the specified element. These "child nodes" include all node types, such as element nodes, text nodes, and comment nodes. This means that text or comment nodes within the element are included as child nodes by childNodes.

Example: Assume we have the following HTML structure:

html
<div id="example">
  Hello World!
  <p>Paragraph 1</p>
  <p>Paragraph 2</p>
</div>

Using childNodes to retrieve child nodes:

javascript
var example = document.getElementById("example");
console.log(example.childNodes);

This will output a result similar to the following, including text nodes and element nodes:

shell
[
  #text "Hello World!",
  <p>Paragraph 1</p>,
  <p>Paragraph 2</p>
]

2. children

In contrast, the children property returns a collection of only element nodes. It is an HTMLCollection containing exclusively element-type child nodes, excluding text nodes, comment nodes, and other node types.

Example: Using the same HTML structure:

html
<div id="example">
  Hello World!
  <p>Paragraph 1</p>
  <p>Paragraph 2</p>
</div>

Using children to retrieve child elements:

javascript
var example = document.getElementById("example");
console.log(example.children);

This will output:

shell
[
  <p>Paragraph 1</p>,
  <p>Paragraph 2</p>
]

Here, the "Hello World!" text node is excluded; only the <p> element nodes are included.

Summary

In summary, childNodes includes all node types, while children includes only element nodes. Selecting the appropriate property depends on the specific content you are processing. When working with the DOM, if you are only interested in element nodes and not text or other node types, children is the better choice.