Get all of a Form's elements using JavaScript

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# Get all of a Form's elements using JavaScript

To get all the elements in a form:

Select the form element.
Use the elements property to get a collection of the form's elements.
Optionally, convert the collection to an array using the Array.from() method.

Here is the HTML for the example.

index.html

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<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>bobbyhadz.com</title>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <form id="my-form">
      <input type="text" id="first_name" name="first_name" />
      <input type="text" id="last_name" name="last_name" />

      <textarea
        id="message"
        name="message"
        rows="5"
        cols="30"
      ></textarea>

      <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
    </form>

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

And here is the related JavaScript code.

index.js

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const form = document.getElementById('my-form');

// ✅ Get all form elements
const formElements = Array.from(form.elements);

formElements.forEach(element => {
  console.log(element);
});

console.log('--------------------------');

// ✅ Get only the input elements in a form
const onlyInputs = document.querySelectorAll('#my-form input');

onlyInputs.forEach(input => {
  console.log(input);
});

get all form elements using javascript

We selected the form element using the document.getElementById() method.

index.js

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const form = document.getElementById('my-form');

The elements property on the form returns a collection containing all of the form controls.

index.js

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const form = document.getElementById('my-form');

// ✅ Get all form elements
const formElements = Array.from(form.elements);

The collection includes input elements, textarea, select elements, etc.

If you need to use any array-specific methods on the collection, convert it to an array using the Array.from method.

The function we passed to the forEach method gets called with each element in the array.

# Get all of the `input` elements in a `form`

In the second example, we used the document.querySelectorAll method to only select the input elements in the form.

index.js

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const onlyInputs = document.querySelectorAll('#my-form input');

onlyInputs.forEach(input => {
  console.log(input);
});

get all input elements in form

The method takes a string containing a valid CSS selector as a parameter and returns a NodeList that contains the matching elements.

The selector you pass to the querySelectorAll method can be as specific as necessary.

The following example selects only input elements with type of text inside of the form.

index.js

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const onlyInputs = document.querySelectorAll(
  '#my-form input[type="text"]'
);

onlyInputs.forEach(input => {
  console.log(input);
});

The NodeList in the example above doesn't include the input element that has a type of submit.

# Loop through all Form elements using JavaScript

To loop through all elements in a form:

Use the elements property on the form to get a collection of the form's elements.
Use the Array.from() method to convert the collection to an array.
Iterate over the elements using the forEach() method.

Here is the HTML for the example.

index.html

Copied!
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>bobbyhadz.com</title>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <form id="my-form">
      <input type="text" id="first_name" name="first_name" />
      <input type="text" id="last_name" name="last_name" />
      <input type="text" id="country" name="country" />
    </form>

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

And here is the related JavaScript code.

index.js

Copied!
const form = document.getElementById('my-form')

// 👇️ if you can't add an `id` to the form
// const form = document.querySelector('form');

Array.from(form.elements).forEach(element => {
  console.log(element);
});

loop through all form elements

We used the getElementById method to select the form element.

The elements property on the form returns a collection containing all of the form controls in the form.

We used the Array.from method to convert the collection to an array, so we can use the Array.forEach method.

The function we passed to the forEach method gets called with each element in the array.

# Using a for...of loop to iterate through all form elements

You can also use a for...of loop to iterate over the elements in the form.

index.js

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const form = document.getElementById('my-form');

for (const element of form.elements) {
  console.log(element);
}

The for...of loop allows us to use the break keyword to break out of the loop if a certain condition is met.

index.js

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const form = document.getElementById('my-form');

for (const element of form.elements) {
  console.log(element);
  if (element.value === 'hello') {
    break;
  }
}

This would be a more efficient solution if you don't need to iterate over all of the form elements, but can break out of the loop once the work is done.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

Show/Hide a Form on button click using JavaScript

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Get all of a Form's elements using JavaScript

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