Getting element content from another html element in javascript

Question

I have this in my html page:

<div id="myDiv">
    <a href="www">
        LinkTitle
    </a>
</div>

I'm trying to get the content of tag 'a' ("LinkTitle"), inside a javascript variable.

This was my approach:

var myDiv = document.getElementById("myDiv");
var linkTitle = myDiv.getElementsByTagName("a").innerHTML;
alert(linkTitle);

And it returns null or undefined. Where did I go wrong and how could I fix this?

Jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/NtV7T/

getElementsByTagName("a") returns a list of a tags in the hmtml document. which need to be iterated — Praveen
– Praveen, Commented May 19, 2014 at 15:06
Oh, stupid mistake, how couldn't I figure this out :( thanks — Alexandru Severin
– Alexandru Severin, Commented May 19, 2014 at 15:10

Dhaval Marthak · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-19 15:06:07Z

2

Try

var linkTitle = myDiv.getElementsByTagName("a")[0].innerHTML;

As document.getElementsByTagName() returns an HTMLCollection of elements with the given tag name

Demo

answered May 19, 2014 at 15:06

Dhaval Marthak

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user755404 · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-19 15:07:59Z

1

var linkTitle = myDiv.getElementsByTagName("a")[0].innerHTML;

getElementsByTagName returns array of elements

answered May 19, 2014 at 15:07

user755404

Comments

Friedrich · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-19 15:08:37Z

-1

The problem is that only the document element has the function getElementsByTagName. All the other HTML elements do not have it.

You could use the querySelector like this:

var myDiv = document.getElementById("myDiv");
var linkTitle = myDiv.querySelector("a")[0].innerHTML;
alert(linkTitle);

answered May 19, 2014 at 15:08

Friedrich

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1 Comment

David Thomas Over a year ago

No, any element-nodes that can contain children are able to implement the getElementsByTagName() method; and querySelector() returns a single element-node (the first, and only the first) node that matches the selector.

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