Question

In jQuery it would simply be

$("a.class").randommethod();

or

$(".class1 .class2").randommethod();

How do I achieve the same effect using pure Javascript? (I’m editing a open-source software for personal use and it doesn’t use jQuery)

Answer 1

You can’t do it using getElementsByClassName. You would need to use something more like querySelectorAll, which accepts CSS style selectors.

var result = document.querySelectorAll('.class1 .class2');

You should note that neither method has full cross-browser support. That’s why people use javascript libraries. If you don’t need to support older browsers, then querySelectorAll is a good choice.

Another option is to use the Sizzle selector engine that jQuery uses.