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Asked: 2026-06-17T16:39:17+00:00

I would like to know what exactly is the difference between querySelector and querySelectorAll

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I would like to know what exactly is the difference between querySelector and querySelectorAll against getElementsByClassName and getElementById?

From this link I could gather that with querySelector I can write document.querySelector(".myclass") to get elements with class myclass and document.querySelector("#myid") to get element with ID myid. But I can already do that getElementsByClassName and getElementById. Which one should be preferred?

Also I work in XPages where the ID is dynamically generated with colon and looks like this view:_id1:inputText1. So when I write document.querySelector("#view:_id1:inputText1") it doesn’t work. But writing document.getElementById("view:_id1:inputText1") works. Any ideas why?

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  1. Editorial Team

    I would like to know what exactly is the difference between querySelector and querySelectorAll against getElementsByClassName and getElementById?

    The syntax and the browser support.

    querySelector is more useful when you want to use more complex selectors.

    e.g. All list items descended from an element that is a member of the foo class: .foo li

    document.querySelector(“#view:_id1:inputText1”) it doesn’t work. But writing document.getElementById(“view:_id1:inputText1”) works. Any ideas why?

    The : character has special meaning inside a selector. You have to escape it. (The selector escape character has special meaning in a JS string too, so you have to escape that too).

    document.querySelector("#view\\:_id1\\:inputText1")
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