HTMLCollection: namedItem() method

The namedItem() method of the HTMLCollection interface returns the first Element in the collection whose id or name attribute match the specified name, or null if no element matches.

In JavaScript, using the array bracket syntax with a String, like collection["value"] is equivalent to collection.namedItem("value").

Syntax

js

namedItem(key)

Parameters

  • key is a string representing the value of the id or name attribute of the element we are looking for.

Return value

Example

HTML

html

<div id="personal">
  <span name="title">Dr.</span>
  <span name="firstname">Carina</span>
  <span name="lastname">Anand</span>
  <span id="degree">(MD)</span>
</div>

JavaScript

js

const container = document.getElementById("personal");

// Returns the HTMLSpanElement with the name "title" if no such element exists null is returned
const titleSpan = container.children.namedItem("title");

// The following variants return undefined instead of null if there's no element with a matching name or id
const firstnameSpan = container.children["firstname"];
const lastnameSpan = container.children.lastname;

// Returns the span element with the id "degree"
const degreeSpan = container.children.namedItem("degree");

const output = document.createElement("div");
output.textContent = `Result: ${titleSpan.textContent} ${firstnameSpan.textContent} ${lastnameSpan.textContent} ${degreeSpan.textContent}`;

container.insertAdjacentElement("afterend", output);

Specification

Specification
DOM Standard
# dom-htmlcollection-nameditem-key

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser