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JavaScript JavaScript and the DOM (Retiring) Making Changes to the DOM Modifying Elements

Greg Schudel
Greg Schudel
4,090 Points
Posted by Greg Schudel
Greg Schudel
4,090 Points

Value? inputType? Element?

I'm on Javascript and the Dom course and the terminology is confusing me a bit.

I'm trying to figure out which of the terms used are specific to the index.html attribute names and which are globally used to do specific things within Javascript (i.e. textContent innerHTML, etc)

1.) An element is any HTML tag on the page correct? I know CSS/HTML, just being EXTRA sure.

2.) In the exercise using the following code:

let inputValue = document.getElementById('linkName').value;
let a = document.getElementById('a');
a.textContent = inputValue; /*can't this be written like this...
inputValue  += a.textContent;
*/

Previous questions aside, what exactly is being accomplished? I don't see any 'behavior' or additional functionality added to the page whatsoever through this code? Am I getting ahead of myself?

1 Answer

cortneyltaylor
cortneyltaylor
9,561 Points

1) Yes, an element in JavaScript is basically any DOM element.

2a) What that code is doing is grabbing document.getElementById('linkName').value and setting document.getElementById('a').textContent to that of document.getElementById('linkName').value. It seems like the second getElementById() is trying to select an <a> tag instead of document.getElementById('a'). If that is the case, it should be using the getElementsByTagName() method instead.

2b) I don't think your suggestion would work. The first (line 3) is setting document.getElementById('a').textContent to equal document.getElementById('linkName').value; your suggestion would add document.getElementById('a').textContent to document.getElementById('linkName').value.

Greg Schudel
Greg Schudel
4,090 Points
Greg Schudel
Greg Schudel
4,090 Points

Thank you for your help and love your image avatar! I should of thought of that.