Do all html nodes have a "getElementsBy" and getElementBy" version?

Question

I'm learning vanilla js and something that keeps coming up is that I see some examples of code that say document.getElementBy... or document.getElement(s)By..., Is it the case that every html node has a corresponding js dom form where getElementBy refers to a single node and getElementsBy refers to a nodeList?

Year

In short, yes, all elements have a getElementsBy and getElementBy version. If the desired element doesn't have an ID, you can use .getElementsByClassName, .getElementsByTagName, .getElementsByName, etc. However, an element is not a node. – Minimus

no. All element nodes however do. developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element vs developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Node – Pardon

Just for whatever it's worth, those APIs are not "vanilla JavaScript", they're "vanilla web browser APIs". They're not part of the JavaScript language. – Brunet

There are also exceptions, such as getElementById only being available on document. – Pardon

Answer 1

Principal element gathering methods from the DOM API are:

• document.getElementById('[ID]') // returns live HTML Element Object
• document.getElementsByClassName('[CLASS]') // returns live HTML Collection Object
• document.getElementsByName('[NAME]') // returns live HTML Collection Object
• document.getElementsByTagName('[ELEMENT-TYPE]') // returns live HTML Collection Object

and

• document.querySelector('[CSS-SELECTOR]') // returns static HTML Element Object
• document.querySelectorAll('[CSS-SELECTOR]') // returns static NodeList Object

Syman

[ELEMENT] should be [ID], [ELEMENT-TYPE] should be [TAGNAME] and [QUERY] should be [SELECTOR] (or [CSS-SELECTOR] if you prefer). querySelector() returns an Element just as getElementById() does, it does not return a single-element NodeList. – Aveyron

Thanks, @BoltClock. Well caught. I've updated all except TAGNAME, because I get acid reflux when I hear elements referred to as "tags". – Syman

But elements do have tag names. – Fresher