getElementById

Summary

Gets an element with a specified ID.

Syntax

var element = document.getElementById(id);

Parameters

id

Data-type: String

The ID to match.

Return Value

Returns an object of type DOM NodeDOM Node

An element that matches the specified ID. If there are multiple matches, the first is returned. If there is no match, null is returned.

Examples

The following example uses getElementById to display the content of the first div element in a collection with the ID attribute value, div1, when a button is clicked.

&lt;!doctype html&gt;
&lt;html&gt;
 &lt;head&gt;
  &lt;title&gt;"Show First DIV Content"&lt;/title&gt;
  &lt;meta charset="utf-8"/&gt;
  &lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
function getID() {
   // Display the content of the first DIV element in the collection.
   var div = document.getElementById("div1");
   alert("The content of the first DIV element is " + "\"" + div.innerHTML + "\".");
}
  &lt;/script&gt;
 &lt;/head&gt;
 &lt;body&gt;
  &lt;div id="div1"&gt;Div #1&lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;div id="div2"&gt;Div #2&lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;div id="div3"&gt;Div #3&lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;input type="button" value="Show First DIV Content" onclick="getID()"&gt;
 &lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;

Related specifications

DOM Level 2 Core: Recommendation
DOM Level 3 Core: Recommendation
W3C DOM4: Candidate Recommendation

Attributions

Microsoft Developer Network: Article