[whatwg] HTMLCollection and HTMLAllCollection suggestion

[David Flanagan]

Perry Smith wrote:
> 
> On Apr 3, 2010, at 11:58 PM, David Flanagan wrote:
> 
>> Perry Smith wrote:
>>> HTMLCollection has a namedItem method that returns either null or one 
>>> object. [1]
>>> HTMLAllCollection has a namedItem method that returns either null, 
>>> one object, or a collection of objects. [2]
>>> I'm a Rails freak and one of the things that they do which I love is 
>>> foo returns an item and foos returns a list of items.  The 
>>> unconscious benefit of this I believe is huge.
>>> My suggestion is to have namedItem always return either null or 1 
>>> object.
>>> And have namedItem*s* always return a collection.  We can debate 
>>> whether it is better to return null or an empty collection.  I prefer 
>>> the latter myself.  Then I can always feed it to an iterator.
>>> [1] 
>>> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/urls.html#htmlcollection-0 
>>>
>>> [2] 
>>> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/urls.html#htmlallcollection-0 
>>>
>>
>> Perry,
>>
>> But no one actually invokes namedItem()--they just use a regular 
>> property access expression on an HTMLAllCollection.  namedItem() is 
>> left over from the strange days when the W3C was specifying Java APIs 
>> for working with XML instead of JavaScript APIs for HTML!
> 
> Hmm.  I was wondering.  The pop up boxes on the side did not have any 
> icons in them so I thought no one had implemented them.
> 
> Can you give me an example of "regular property access expression on an 
> HTMLAllCollection" ?  I can't figure out what you are referring to.
> 
> Thanks,
> Perry
> 
> 

Perry,

I think the only HTMLAllCollection is the deprecated document.all.
By regular property access expression, I mean something like:

     document.all.foo

or

     document.all["foo"]

instead of:

     document.all.namedItem("foo")

     David