Question

I have a snippet of code like this:

var profileLinks = new Array();

for (var i = 0; i<searchResult.length; ++i) 
{
    var profileLink=searchResult[i].getElementsByTagName("a");
    profileLinks[i]=profileLink[0].href;
    alert(i+1+" of "+searchResult.length+" "+profileLinks[i]);
}

It seems like I should be able to make it more concise by using this:

//alternate construction (why doesn't this work?)

var searchResult = document.getElementsByClassName("f_foto").getElementsByTagName("a");

What’s wrong here?

Answer 1

document.getElementsByClassName("f_foto")  

returns a selection, therefore you cannot chain functions to it. You need to specify an element directly not a whole selection, for example this would work correctly.

 document.getElementsByClassName("f_foto")[0].getElementsByTagName("a"); 

Because document.getElementsByClassName(“f_foto”)[0] points to an object and not to a selection of objects.