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目录

HTML DOM Element children

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Example

Get a collection of the <body> element's children:

const collection = document.body.children;
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More examples below.

Description

The children property returns a collection of an element's child elements.

The children property returns an HTMLCollection object.

See Also:

The firstElementChild Property

The lastElementChild Property

The nextElementSibling Property

The previousElementSibling Property

The childElementCount Property

The childNodes Property

HTML Nodes vs Elements

In the HTML DOM (Document Object Model), an HTML document is a collection of nodes with (or without) child nodes.

Nodes are element nodes, text nodes, and comment nodes.

Whitespace between elements are also text nodes.

Elements are only element nodes.

childNodes vs children

childNodes returns child nodes (element nodes, text nodes, and comment nodes).

children returns child elements (not text and comment nodes).

Siblings vs Element Siblings

Siblings are "brothers" and "sisters".

Siblings are nodes with the same parent (in the same childNodes list).

Element Siblings are elements with the same parent (in the same children list).

Syntax

element.children

Return Value

Type Description
Object A HTMLCollection object.
The collection of element nodes.
The elements are sorted as they appear in the document.

More Examples

How many children does "myDIV" have:

let count = document.getElementById("myDIV").children.length;
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Change the background of the second child element of "myDIV":

const collection = document.getElementById("myDIV").children;
collection[1].style.backgroundColor = "yellow";
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Get the text of the third child element (index 2) of a <select> element:

const collection = document.getElementById("mySelect").children[2].text;
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Loop all children of <body> and change their background:

const collection = document.body.children;
for (let i = 0; i < collection.length; i++) {
  collection[i].style.backgroundColor = "red";
}
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Browser Support

element.children is a DOM Level 1 (1998) feature.

It is fully supported in all browsers:

Chrome Edge Firefox Safari Opera IE
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 9-11
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