Question

I have a Javascript question that I am curious about. When using:

var test = document.links(arrayNum).name;

Is it possible to dig deeper into specifying links? For instance, if there is just a group of links from within a div with an id that you would like to target as opposed to all the links on the page could you write something like:

var test = document.getElementById('divId').links(arrayNum).name;

Or could I add a class to the statement to target only the links associated with it?

var test = document.links.className(arrayNum).name;

Is anything like this feasible?

Answer 1

The links collection belongs to the document object only, it is not on the prototype chain for elements. It’s not quite the same thing, but you can get all the <a> tags of a particular element using getElementsByTagName:

// retrieve a collection of all a elements
var test = document.getElementById('divId').getElementsByTagName("a");

In browsers that support it, you can use querySelectorAll:

// retrieve a collection of all links
var test = document.getElementById('divId').querySelectorAll("a, area");

Or you could use a library like jQuery or mootools to do all the hard work for you:

var test = $("#divId a, #divId area");