How to search the children of a HTMLDivElement?

Question

I have an HTMLDivElement, and my goal is to find a div nested beneath this.

Ideally I'd want something like getElementById, but that function doesn't work for HTMLDivElement.

Do I need to manually traverse the graph, or is there an easier way?

Answer 1

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/ThinkingStiff/y9K9Y/

If the <div> you're searching for has a class, you can use getElementsByClassName():

document.getElementById( 'parentDiv' ).getElementsByClassName( 'childDiv' )[0]; 

If it doesn't have a class you can use getElementsByTagName():

document.getElementById( 'parentDiv' ).getElementsByTagName( 'div' )[0]; 

And if it has an id you can, of course, just use getElementById() to find it no matter where it is in the DOM:

document.getElementById( 'childDiv' ); 

Answer 2

  //For immediate children     var children = document.getElementById('id').childNodes;     //or for all descendants     var children = document.getElementById('id').getElementsByTagName('*');