Type casting Node to Element

[pablo platt]

Hi,

What's the difference between Node and Element?
The compiler complains that I'm giving him Node type while it expects Element type.
Is it ok to typecast to Element or am I just hiding the problem.

Code:

my.Component.prototype.createDom = function() {
    this.element_ = /** @type {Element} */ goog.dom.htmlToDocumentFragment(...);

var el = goog.dom.getElementByClass('myclass', /** @type {Element} */ (this.element_.previousSibling));

Thanks

[John Lenz]

This is generally safe.  Node is returned from more generic methods.

[pablo platt]

Thanks

[Nick Santos]

For reference, see:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/132564/whats-the-difference-between-an-element-and-a-node-in-xml
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Core/core.html

TL;DR: The DOM interface uses subclassing a lot to differentiate
between different types of Nodes: Elements, TextNodes,
HTMLInputElements, etc.

Many closure-library functions are pretty liberal in what they accept
(for example, only Elements can have CSS classes, but if you really
want to read the CSS class of a Node, go right ahead), but there are
some cases where it really matters (like in Components).

[pablo platt]

Thanks