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JavaScript JavaScript and the DOM (Retiring) Getting a Handle on the DOM Selection Review

Posted by jyoti barman
jyoti barman
Courses Plus Student 1,280 Points

Can someone help me out with this question?

the question that says document.getElementsByTagName('body')

1 Answer

David McNeill
David McNeill
44,438 Points
David McNeill
David McNeill
44,438 Points

Hi Jyoti,

The hint in the question mentions that getElementsByTagName returns a collection of elements, not a single element. If you know about arrays as collections of elements, you might know about bracket syntax too.

For example:

const myArray = ['item1', 'item2', 'item3'];

console.log(myArray[0]);

This code would log out the first item in the array ('item1') because I'm using [0] to select it. I could use [1] or [2] to log out the others. This is the index of the array element you need to fetch.

So to answer the question correctly, you just need to add [0] to the end of your line of code so it reads:

const body = document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];

This means you're fetching all of the elements in the DOM that have a tag name of body into a collection, then selecting the first item in that collection. It's a trick question because we know there will only ever be one <body> element! the more likely selector would be document.querySelector('body'), but that will probably appear later in the course.

Hope this helps!