JavaScript DOM - Part 5 - Get Elements By ClassName [video + article]

This is going to be a multi-part Video + article tutorial series on JavaScript DOM. You're reading Part 5

You can read Part 4 here:

Article No Longer Available

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Several Elements with the same Class Name

The same class can be used by several elements. We can grab all of these elements having a particular class name. Example use cases may be like, grabbing all the buttons of the page having the same class name, grabbing all the images with the same class name, or any element for that matter.

Get elements by class name

When we use document.getElementsByClassName('class-name'), it grabs all the elements that have the same class name and returns us an HTML Collection that we can index or iterate to get the elements that we need in particular. A HTML Collection is similar to an Array that we're used to, so you can index it or get the length of it.

syntax:

document.getElementsByClassName('classname')

example:
HTML

<p class="experiment">Hey there</p>
<p class="experiment">How's it going?</p>
<p class="experiment">Great!</p>
<p class="experiment">A set of elements with same class</p>

JavaScript

let p = document.getElementsByClassName('experiment');
console.log(p)

console.log(p[0].innerText)

output

HTMLCollection[]

Hey there

You can access to the individual elements by indexing and access their properties, change them, and do anything. But wait, that's not all of it.

Iterating through the HTML Collection

We can iterate through the HTML Collection, apply a particular operation on all of them. Below is an example of such iteration.

HTML

<p class="experiment">Hey there</p>
<p class="experiment">How's it going?</p>
<p class="experiment">Great!</p>
<p class="experiment">A set of elements with same class</p>

JavaScript

let p = document.getElementsByClassName('experiment');

for (let x=0 ; x < p.length ; x++ ) {
   p[x].style.color = 'dodgerblue';
}

When this code is run, all the elements that have the class name as 'experiment' are changed to dodgerblue text color. In the for loop, the p.length gives the length of the HTML Collection, which is used by the for-loop.
So as the usual rule goes by, once you grab an element, you can do anything with it.

Note: it is getElementsByClassName , remember to add the 's' and be cautious about the capitalizations.

So this is all you need to know for now about getting Elements By Class Name

Next Part coming tomorrow, where we discuss about how you can get multiple elements by using getElementsByTagName.

Thank you for reading 😊

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Written by,

Written by,

Tharun ShivFollow

Site Reliability Engineer | Blogger | Podcasts | Youtube @ developertharun

Thank you for reading, This is Tharun Shiv a.k.a Developer Tharun

Comments

[umamaheswari.v]

Good article, looking forward for more.. :)

[venkat anirudh]

What if there is only one element with that class name, would it still return an HTML Collection? Good article, btw 🔥

[Habdul Hazeez]

Yes, document.getElementsByClassName would still return an HTMLcollection if there is only one element with that class name.

Take the following code snippet.

<form class="myForm">
    <input type="text" placeholder="Name" />
    <input type="email" placeholder="Email Address" />
    <input type="submit" value="Subscribe" />
</form>

let myForm = document.getElementsByClassName('myForm');
console.log(myForm);

The console will log:

HTMLCollection { 0: form.myForm, length: 1 }

If you have just a single element with a unique class name, you should prefer document.querySelector over document.getElementsByClassName.

It's syntax will be:

let myForm = document.querySelector('.myForm'); // note the "." before the class name
console.log(myForm);

The output in the console will be:

<form class="myForm">

You can also attach an HTML ID to it and use document.getElementByID.

@praveenreddy1798
@umamaheswari.v

[venkat anirudh]

Got it, thank you Habdul 😊

[Habdul Hazeez]

You are welcome.

@praveenreddy1798
@umamaheswari.v

[Tharun Shiv]

That's a great answer in detail. thank you🙂

[Habdul Hazeez]

You are welcome. I am glad I could help.

[praveenreddy1798]

Thank you @Habdul 😊

[umamaheswari.v]

I think it would still return an HTML Collection

[praveenreddy1798]

Yeah, even I've the same doubt

[Jaya chandrika reddy]

Great Article, will we also get to know about querySelector in this series?

[Tharun Shiv]

Yes, they're coming up😊

[Temitope A Ogunbiyi]

Great lesson Tharun

[Tharun Shiv]

Thank you 🙂

[Mohamed Dahir]

Do you plan on introducing querySelector and querySelectorAll for getting DOM elements? And maybe how to alias them to $ and $$ respectively?

[Tharun Shiv]

Hi Mohamed,
Yes, they are definitely included as a part of this series. 😊 Thank you for showing interest