Finding HTML Elements

Often, with JavaScript, you want to manipulate HTML elements.

To do so, you have to find the elements first. There are several ways to do this:

Finding HTML elements by id

Finding HTML elements by tag name

Finding HTML elements by class name

Finding HTML elements by CSS selectors

Finding HTML elements by HTML object collections

Finding HTML Element by Id

The easiest way to find an HTML element in the DOM, is by using the element id.

This example finds the element with id="intro" :

Example

const element = document.getElementById("intro"); Try it Yourself »

If the element is found, the method will return the element as an object (in element).

If the element is not found, element will contain null .

Finding HTML Elements by Tag Name

This example finds all <p> elements:

Example

const element = document.getElementsByTagName("p"); Try it Yourself »

This example finds the element with id="main" , and then finds all <p> elements inside "main" :

Example

const x = document.getElementById("main");
const y = x.getElementsByTagName("p"); Try it Yourself »

Finding HTML Elements by Class Name

If you want to find all HTML elements with the same class name, use getElementsByClassName() .

This example returns a list of all elements with class="intro" .

Example

const x = document.getElementsByClassName("intro"); Try it Yourself »

Finding HTML Elements by CSS Selectors

If you want to find all HTML elements that match a specified CSS selector (id, class names, types, attributes, values of attributes, etc), use the querySelectorAll() method.

This example returns a list of all <p> elements with class="intro" .

Example

const x = document.querySelectorAll("p.intro"); Try it Yourself »

Finding HTML Elements by HTML Object Collections

This example finds the form element with id="frm1" , in the forms collection, and displays all element values:

Example

const x = document.forms["frm1"];
let text = "";
for (let i = 0; i < x.length; i++) {
text += x.elements[i].value + "<br>";
}
document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = text; Try it Yourself »

The following HTML objects (and object collections) are also accessible:

document.anchors

document.body

document.documentElement

document.embeds

document.forms

document.head

document.images

document.links

document.scripts

document.title

Exercise:

Use the getElementById method to find the <p> element, and change its text to "Hello".

<p id="demo"></p> <script> = "Hello"; </script> Submit Answer »

Start the Exercise

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