Find Element by Content using JavaScript

Find Element by Content using JavaScript #

To find elements by content:

Use the document.querySelectorAll method to select DOM elements by tag.
Use the for...of loop to iterate over the collection.
On each iteration, check if the textContent of the element matches the expected content.

Here is the html for the example in the article.

index.html

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <div>Hello world</div>
    <div>One two three</div>
    <div>Apple banana kiwi</div>

    <script src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

And here is the related JavaScript code.

index.js

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const text = 'Hello world';

const matches = [];

for (const div of document.querySelectorAll('div')) {
  if (div.textContent.includes(text)) {
    matches.push(div);
  }
}

console.log(matches); // 👉️ [div.box]

This example finds all DOM elements whose content contains a specific string. If you only need to find a single DOM element that matches the condition, scroll down to the example that uses the find() method.

We used the document.querySelectorAll method to get a NodeList that contains all of the DOM elements that have a tag of div.

The next step is to use the for...of loop to iterate over the NodeList.

On each iteration, we check if the element's textContent includes the expected text. If there is a match, we push the element to the matches array.

If you want to ignore case when checking if the DOM element's content includes the specific string, you can convert both to lowercase.

index.js

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const text = 'HELLO WORLD';

const matches = [];

for (const div of document.querySelectorAll('div')) {
  if (div.textContent.toLowerCase().includes(text.toLowerCase())) {
    matches.push(div);
  }
}

console.log(matches); // 👉️ [div.box]

By converting the element's textContent and the text we are looking for to lowercase, we are able to do a case insensitive check.

Because the for...of loop iterates over all of the elements in the NodeList, this approach would be inefficient if you only need the first element that matches the condition.

To find the first DOM element whose content contains a specific string:

Use the document.querySelectorAll method to select elements by tag.
Convert the result to an array using the Array.from method.
Use the find() method to iterate over the array.
On each iteration, check if the element's content contains the string.

index.js

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const text = 'Hello world';

const elements = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('div'));

const match = elements.find(el => {
  return el.textContent.includes(text);
});

console.log(match); // 👉️ div.box

The function we passed to the Array.find method gets called for each element in the array until it returns a truthy value or exhausts the elements in the array.

If the callback function returns a truthy value, the find() method short-circuits and returns the corresponding array element.

If the condition is never met, the find method will return undefined.

If you want to do a case insensitive check whether the element contains the specific string, you can convert the element's textContent and the string you are checking for to lowercase.

index.js

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const text = 'Hello world';

const elements = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('div'));

const match = elements.find(el => {
  return el.textContent.toLowerCase().includes(text.toLowerCase());
});

console.log(match); // 👉️ div.box

By converting both of the strings we are comparing to lowercase, we are able to do a case insensitive comparison.

Find Element by Content using JavaScript

Find Element by Content using JavaScript #

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Borislav Hadzhiev