GetElementByID - Multiple IDs GetElementByID - Multiple IDs arrays arrays

GetElementByID - Multiple IDs


document.getElementById() only supports one name at a time and only returns a single node not an array of nodes. You have several different options:

  1. You could implement your own function that takes multiple ids and returns multiple elements.
  2. You could use document.querySelectorAll() that allows you to specify multiple ids in a CSS selector string .
  3. You could put a common class names on all those nodes and use document.getElementsByClassName() with a single class name.

Examples of each option:

doStuff(document.querySelectorAll("#myCircle1, #myCircle2, #myCircle3, #myCircle4"));

or:

// put a common class on each objectdoStuff(document.getElementsByClassName("circles"));

or:

function getElementsById(ids) {    var idList = ids.split(" ");    var results = [], item;    for (var i = 0; i < idList.length; i++) {        item = document.getElementById(idList[i]);        if (item) {            results.push(item);        }    }    return(results);}doStuff(getElementsById("myCircle1 myCircle2 myCircle3 myCircle4"));


This will not work, getElementById will query only one element by time.

You can use document.querySelectorAll("#myCircle1, #myCircle2") for querying more then one element.

ES6 or newer

With the new version of the JavaScript, you can also convert the results into an array to easily transverse it.

Example:

const elementsList = document.querySelectorAll("#myCircle1, #myCircle2");const elementsArray = [...elementsList];// Now you can use cool array prototypeselementsArray.forEach(element => {    console.log(element);});

How to query a list of IDs in ES6

Another easy way if you have an array of IDs is to use the language to build your query, example:

const ids = ['myCircle1', 'myCircle2', 'myCircle3'];const elements = document.querySelectorAll(ids.map(id => `#${id}`).join(', '));


No, it won't work.

document.getElementById() method accepts only one argument.

However, you may always set classes to the elements and use getElementsByClassName() instead. Another option for modern browsers is to use querySelectorAll() method:

document.querySelectorAll("#myCircle1, #myCircle2, #myCircle3, #myCircle4");