How to count the number of anchor tags within a div using javascript?

Question

I want to know how to count the number of anchor tags present within a div element. e.g.:

<div>
<a href="1" >1</a>
<a href="2" >2</a>
<a href="3" >3</a>
<a href="4" >4</a>
</div>

How many <a> tags?

Answer 1

theDivElement.getElementsByTagName('a').length

Answer 2

Use HTML DOM getElementsByTagName() to get all "a" tags under an object.
To get the div you'de be better off giving it an ID and then use getElementsByTagName.

var anchors = document.getElementById("thediv").getElementsByTagName("a");
alert("The Div has " + anchors.length + " links in it");

<div id="thediv">
  <a href="#">link 1</a>
  <a href="#">link 2</a>
  <a href="#">link 3</a>
</div>