Question

I’m trying to replace one div with another and turn the others off:

JS

function imgToSWF1() {
document.getElementById('movie-con2 movie-con3 movie-con4').style.display = 'none';
document.getElementById('movie-con').style.display = 'block';
}
function imgToSWF2() {
document.getElementById('movie-con movie-con3 movie-con4').style.display = 'none';
document.getElementById('movie-con2').style.display = 'block';
}
function imgToSWF3() {
document.getElementById('movie-con movie-con2 movie-con4').style.display = 'none';    
document.getElementById('movie-con3').style.display = 'block';
}
function imgToSWF4() {
document.getElementById('movie-con movie-con2 movie-con3').style.display = 'none';
document.getElementById('movie-con4').style.display = 'block';
}

HTML

<span onmouseover="src=imgToSWF1();"><div class="numbers">01</div></span>
<span onmouseover="src=imgToSWF2();"><div class="numbers">02</div></span>
<span onmouseover="src=imgToSWF3();"><div class="numbers">03</div></span>
<span onmouseover="src=imgToSWF4();"><div class="numbers">04</div></span>

I can’t seem to get this to work and I believe that targetting multiple ID’s isn’t possible like this? Anyway any advice would be smashing – thanks!

Answer 1

You’re correct that you cannot supply multiple ids to document.getElementById(). Instead, you can grab them all individually using an array. There are many ways to accomplish what you are trying to do. This is a straightforward method based on iterating through the array of the elements to hide and hiding all of them.

This method expects you to define the array of nodes to hide in each of your functions, and so is non-ideal.

// Example:
function imgToSWF1() {
  var nodes = ['movie-con2', 'movie-con3', 'movie-con4'];

  // Loop over and hide every node in the array
  for (var i=0; i<nodes.length; i++) {
    document.getElementById(nodes[i]).style.display = 'none';
  }
  document.getElementById('movie-con').style.display = 'block';
}

Better:

This can be refactored into one function, however. Make one function which recieves the node you want to show as an argument. Hide the others. The array should contain all nodes that may be hidden in any circumstance, and be defined at a higher scope than the function.

// Array holds all nodes ids
var nodes = ['movie-con', 'movie-con2', 'movie-con3', 'movie-con4'];
// Function receives a node id which will be shown
function imageToSWF(nodeId) {
 // Loop over and hide every node in the array
  for (var i=0; i<nodes.length; i++) {
    document.getElementById(nodes[i]).style.display = 'none';
  }
  // And unhide/show the one you want, passed as an argument
  document.getElementById(nodeId).style.display = 'block';
}

Call as:

<span onmouseover="imageToSWF('movie-con');"><div class="numbers">01</div></span>
<span onmouseover="imageToSWF('movie-con2');"><div class="numbers">02</div></span>
<span onmouseover="imageToSWF('movie-con3');"><div class="numbers">03</div></span>
<span onmouseover="imageToSWF('movie-con4');"><div class="numbers">04</div></span>