What is the Document Object Model (DOM)?
TL;DR
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a tree-structured representation of HTML that browsers and [parsers](/glossary/web-extraction-apis/what-is-html-parser) create from markup. It organizes elements into a hierarchy—each tag becomes a queryable node. Web scrapers navigate this tree using [CSS selectors](/glossary/web-scraping-apis/what-is-css-selector-web-scraping) or [XPath](/glossary/web-extraction-apis/what-is-xpath-selector-in-web-scraping) to extract data. What is the Document Object Model (DOM)?
TL;DR
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a tree-structured representation of HTML that browsers and parsers create from markup. It organizes elements into a hierarchy—each tag becomes a queryable node. Web scrapers navigate this tree using CSS selectors or XPath to extract data.
What is the Document Object Model (DOM)?
When a browser loads HTML, it builds the DOM—a structured tree where <html> is the root, <head> and <body> are children, and so on. This hierarchy enables programmatic access to elements via selectors like document.querySelector('.price').
The DOM isn't static. JavaScript modifies it after page load, adding content dynamically. The raw HTML differs from the rendered DOM—JavaScript rendering captures the complete state. Web scraping APIs like Olostep handle DOM parsing and rendering internally, returning clean data without you managing document structures.
Key Takeaways
The DOM transforms HTML text into a queryable tree structure. Scrapers use selectors to target elements. JavaScript modifies the DOM dynamically, requiring rendering for complete content. Olostep handles DOM parsing automatically, returning extracted data without manual tree navigation.
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