[whatwg] getElementsByClassName()
Ric Hardacre
ric at hardacre.org
Fri Feb 3 03:42:43 PST 2006
Gervase Markham wrote:
> Brad Fults wrote:
>> I see this is still an open issue[1]. Is this now implemented as #1
>> (space-delimited class names to match)?
>>
>> I suggest either going with the space-delimited approach (as it's
>> language-agnostic and well-defined at least) or with Aankhen's
>> suggestion of a single array argument.
>
> Musing...
>
> If you have:
>
> <p class="foo bar">Fred</p>
> <p class="bar foo">Barney</p>
> <p class="foo baz bar">Wilma</p>
>
> which should be picked up by getElementsByClassName("foo bar")?
this also raises the possibility of some confusion as the order of
inheritance is important:
foo
{
color: red;
}
bar
{
color: blue;
}
in the quoted example Fred and Wilma would be blue and barney red. so
the distinction between class="foo bar" and class="bar foo" is real, not
merely syntactic. a search for "foo" should pick up either but a search
for "foo bar" should only find the first, so IMO a comma seperated list
would be better in that respect:
1. getElementsByClassName("foo bar,foo tang,woo tang")
this use of explicit class matching could, however be considered an
"advanced" use of the function, with emphasis on the simpler:
2. getElementsByClassName("bar,tang")
as an aside this then yields another level of even more complex
behavioural possibilities:
3. getElementsByClassName("foo>bar")
though in this example the ClassName, having not being explicitly
declared in the markup. is not what is being selected, but a derived
inheritance, perhaps warranting a new function
4. getElementsByRelationship("foo:firstChild")
what this would mean, therefore is that
5. <div class="foo bar">
would be selected by example 1. whereas
6. <div class="foo"><div class="bar">
would be selected by example 3. specifically and example 4. if the
designer wanted to make assumptions about the resuting DOM
Ric
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