namedItem

namedItem is a method on the NamedNodeMap interface in the Document Object Model (DOM). NamedNodeMap represents a collection of nodes that can be accessed by name, commonly used to expose an element’s attributes as nodes. The namedItem method retrieves the node in the map that has the specified name, typically returning an Attr node, or null if no such node exists.

In practice, namedItem is used to access an attribute by name from an element’s attribute collection, which is exposed via element.attributes. For example, element.attributes.namedItem('class') would return the attribute node named "class" if present. The value of the attribute can then be obtained from the node, such as attr.value. Many implementations provide a closely related standard method named getNamedItem, and namedItem often serves as an alias for compatibility in older code. When writing modern cross-browser code, getNamedItem is the more widely documented standard method.

Notes and behavior: the collection is live, meaning changes to the element’s attributes are reflected in the NamedNodeMap and vice versa. namedItem operates within the DOM’s core attribute access pattern and is primarily used in XML and DOM-based processing, as seen in various browsers and server-side DOM implementations.

See also: NamedNodeMap, getNamedItem, item. While namedItem may appear in legacy code or some browser-specific implementations, getNamedItem is the preferred standard method for retrieving an attribute node by name. Similar concepts exist for namespaces with getNamedItemNS and related methods in the DOM API.