Question

Possible Duplicate:
Access DIV element from JavaScript

I have a HTML code like :

<div id="headerlist" >
<h3> Enrollment Efficiency</h3>
</div>

I have to access element Enrollment Efficiency

I am trying with :

var headerlist = document.getElementsById('headerlist');
alert("the value of headerlist is "+ headerlist.firstChild);

But its not working.

Answer 1

Just a typo. It is getElementById() (no plural s there).

var headerlist = document.getElementById('headerlist');

An id should be unique throughout the document, hence only one element should be returned by this functions. If there could be more than one element matched, like with getElementsByName(), there is a plural s.

EDIT

As mentioned by @Cerbrus: The firstChild attribute, just points to first child element, and not to its contents.

To remarks here:

1. The firstChild in your example is just a whitespace text node. if you want the next non-whitespace node use firstElementChild (supported in most modern browswers).

2. To display the contents, use something like innerHTML or textContent.