Question

Just a quick one, but I’m having some trouble getting my head around it.

I’m using javascript to detect elements inside a menu:

var nav = document.getElementById('nav');
var list = nav.children.length;

But the menu has nested <ul> for dropdowns, how do I target these?

Answer 1

After looking at your code and actually reading and seeing your fiddle I removed my other answer as it was misinterpreting what you need…

In short you need to write a recursive function to traverse all the child uls when found. I don’t have my development env running so will psuedo code this for you (and I’m sure you’ll get the drift)

RecursiveFunction(document.getElementById('nav'), "-");

//elsewhere

function RecursiveFunction(domElement, prependedChar)
{

    //because this is .js you will probably need some closures...
    var currPrependedChar = prependedChar;
    var dom = domElement;

    //iterate all nodes, check if they are a li/a and populate dropdown...
    for(count;count < dom.list.Length;++count){

    //if the element you have found is a ul recurse
    if(dom.list[count] == "ul"){
         RecursiveFunction(dom.list[count], currPrependedChar + currPrependedChar ); //this calls this function
    }else{
         //combobox option.Value = currPrependedChar + elementInnerText
    }
    }
}

This is the completed recursive function in fiddle form

Working fiddle

CODE

function RecursiveFunction(currDom, currPrependedChar) {

//because this is .js you will probably need some closures...
var prependedChar = currPrependedChar;
var dom = currDom;
var children = dom.children;
var childrenCount = children.length;


//iterate all nodes, check if they are a li/a and populate dropdown...
for (var i = 0; i < childrenCount; ++i) {

    var curElem = children[i];
    //if the element you have found is a ul recurse
    switch (curElem.nodeName) {
    case "A":
        var option = document.createElement('option');
        option.innerHTML = prependedChar + curElem.text;
        option.value = curElem.href;
        select.appendChild(option);
        break;
        default:
            if(curElem.nodeName == "UL") prependedChar += prependedChar
            RecursiveFunction(curElem, prependedChar);
        break;
    }
}
}