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Element: getElementsByTagName() method

The Element.getElementsByTagName() method returns a live HTMLCollection of elements with the given tag name.

All descendants of the specified element are searched, but not the element itself. The returned list is live, which means it updates itself with the DOM tree automatically. Therefore, there is no need to call Element.getElementsByTagName() with the same element and arguments repeatedly if the DOM changes in between calls.

When called on an HTML element in an HTML document, getElementsByTagName lower-cases the argument before searching for it. This is undesirable when trying to match camel-cased SVG elements (such as <linearGradient>) in an HTML document. Instead, use Element.getElementsByTagNameNS(), which preserves the capitalization of the tag name.

Element.getElementsByTagName is similar to Document.getElementsByTagName(), except that it only searches for elements that are descendants of the specified element.

Syntax

getElementsByTagName(tagName)

Parameters

tagName is the qualified name to look for. The special string "*" represents all elements. For compatibility with XHTML, lower-case should be used.

Return value

A live HTMLCollection of elements with a matching tag name, in the order they appear. If no elements are found, the HTMLCollection is empty.

Examples

// Check the status of each data cell in a table
const table = document.getElementById("forecast-table");
const cells = table.getElementsByTagName("td");

for (const cell of cells) {
  const status = cell.getAttribute("data-status");
  if (status === "open") {
    // Grab the data
  }
}

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard # dom-element-getelementsbytagname

Browser compatibility

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	WebView Android	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet
`getElementsByTagName`	1 Initially, this method was returning a `NodeList`; it was then changed to reflect the spec change.	12	1 Before Firefox 19, this method was returning a `NodeList`; it was then changed to reflect the change in the spec.	5.5	8 Initially, this method was returning a `NodeList`; it was then changed to reflect the spec change.	1 Initially, this method was returning a `NodeList`; it was then changed to reflect the spec change.	4.4 Initially, this method was returning a `NodeList`; it was then changed to reflect the spec change.	18 Initially, this method was returning a `NodeList`; it was then changed to reflect the spec change.	4 Before Firefox 19, this method was returning a `NodeList`; it was then changed to reflect the change in the spec.	10.1	1 Initially, this method was returning a `NodeList`; it was then changed to reflect the spec change.	1.0 Initially, this method was returning a `NodeList`; it was then changed to reflect the spec change.
`all_elements_selector`	1	12	1	6	≤15	1	4.4	18	4	≤14	1	1.0

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https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/getElementsByTagName