Home/ Questions/Q 6944047
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-27T13:14:06+00:00

So I’m learning to manipulate the DOM and I noticed one interesting thing: Let’s

  • 0

So I’m learning to manipulate the DOM and I noticed one interesting thing:

Let’s say I want to set the name attribute of an element by using the “.” dot notation:

element.name = "someName";
console.log(document.getElementsByName("someName")[0]); // returns "undefined"??

However if I use the document.setAttribute() method, it works fine:

element.setAttribute("name", "someName");
console.log(document.getElementsByName("someName")[0]); // returns the element like it should.

Not sure why the dot notation method doesn’t work in the first case.

Why does this happen?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    My guess (because you didn’t specify the element type) is the element normally does not have a name attribute, so setting the DOM property like that won’t work.

    For example, setting the name property on an input element will work. Setting it on a div will not.

    It will work, however, with setAttribute().

    jsFiddle.

    • 0