What are the possible reasons for document.getElementById, $("#id") or any other DOM method / jQuery selector not finding the elements?
Example problems include:
jQuery silently failing to bind an event handler
jQuery "getter" methods (.val(), .html(), .text()) returning undefined
A standard DOM method returning null resulting in any of several errors:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property '...' of null
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set properties of null (setting '...')
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property '...' of null
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading '...')
The most common forms are:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property 'onclick' of null
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'addEventListener' of null
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'style' of null
The element you were trying to find wasn’t in the DOM when your script ran.
The position of your DOM-reliant script can have a profound effect on its behavior. Browsers parse HTML documents from top to bottom. Elements are added to the DOM and scripts are (generally) executed as they're encountered. This means that order matters. Typically, scripts can't find elements that appear later in the markup because those elements have yet to be added to the DOM.
Consider the following markup; script #1 fails to find the <div> while script #2 succeeds:
<script>
console.log("script #1:", document.getElementById("test")); // null
</script>
<div id="test">test div</div>
<script>
console.log("script #2:", document.getElementById("test")); // <div id="test" ...
</script>
So, what should you do? You've got a few options:
Option 1: Move your script
Given what we've seen in the example above, an intuitive solution might be to simply move your script down the markup, past the elements you'd like to access. In fact, for a long time, placing scripts at the bottom of the page was considered a best practice for a variety of reasons. Organized in this fashion, the rest of the document would be parsed before executing your script:
<body>
<button id="test">click me</button>
<script>
document.getElementById("test").addEventListener("click", function() {
console.log("clicked:", this);
});
</script>
</body><!-- closing body tag -->
While this makes sense and is a solid option for legacy browsers, it's limited and there are more flexible, modern approaches available.
Option 2: The defer attribute
While we did say that scripts are, "(generally) executed as they're encountered," modern browsers allow you to specify a different behavior. If you're linking an external script, you can make use of the defer attribute.
[defer, a Boolean attribute,] is set to indicate to a browser that the script is meant to be executed after the document has been parsed, but before firing DOMContentLoaded.
This means that you can place a script tagged with defer anywhere, even the <head>, and it should have access to the fully realized DOM.
<script src="https://gh-canon.github.io/misc-demos/log-test-click.js" defer></script>
<button id="test">click me</button>
Just keep in mind...
defer can only be used for external scripts, i.e.: those having a src attribute.
be aware of browser support, i.e.: buggy implementation in IE < 10
Option 3: Modules
Depending upon your requirements, you may be able to utilize JavaScript modules. Among other important distinctions from standard scripts (noted here), modules are deferred automatically and are not limited to external sources.
Set your script's type to module, e.g.:
<script type="module">
document.getElementById("test").addEventListener("click", function(e) {
console.log("clicked: ", this);
});
</script>
<button id="test">click me</button>
Option 4: Defer with event handling
Add a listener to an event that fires after your document has been parsed.
DOMContentLoaded event
DOMContentLoaded fires after the DOM has been completely constructed from the initial parse, without waiting for things like stylesheets or images to load.
<script>
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(e){
document.getElementById("test").addEventListener("click", function(e) {
console.log("clicked:", this);
});
});
</script>
<button id="test">click me</button>
Window: load event
The load event fires after DOMContentLoaded and additional resources like stylesheets and images have been loaded. For that reason, it fires later than desired for our purposes. Still, if you're considering older browsers like IE8, the support is nearly universal. Granted, you may want a polyfill for addEventListener().
<script>
window.addEventListener("load", function(e){
document.getElementById("test").addEventListener("click", function(e) {
console.log("clicked:", this);
});
});
</script>
<button id="test">click me</button>
jQuery's ready()
DOMContentLoaded and window:load each have their caveats. jQuery's ready() delivers a hybrid solution, using DOMContentLoaded when possible, failing over to window:load when necessary, and firing its callback immediately if the DOM is already complete.
You can pass your ready handler directly to jQuery as $(handler), e.g.:
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.js" integrity="sha256-H+K7U5CnXl1h5ywQfKtSj8PCmoN9aaq30gDh27Xc0jk=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script>
$(function() {
$("#test").click(function() {
console.log("clicked:", this);
});
});
</script>
<button id="test">click me</button>
Option 5: Event Delegation
Delegate the event handling to an ancestor of the target element.
When an element raises an event (provided that it's a bubbling event and nothing stops its propagation), each parent in that element's ancestry, all the way up to window, receives the event as well. That allows us to attach a handler to an existing element and sample events as they bubble up from its descendants... even from descendants added after the handler was attached. All we have to do is check the event to see whether it was raised by the desired element and, if so, run our code.
Typically, this pattern is reserved for elements that don't exist at load time or to avoid attaching a large number of duplicate handlers. For efficiency, select the nearest reliable ancestor of the target element rather than attaching it to the document.
Native JavaScript
<div id="ancestor"><!-- nearest ancestor available to our script -->
<script>
document.getElementById("ancestor").addEventListener("click", function(e) {
if (e.target.id === "descendant") {
console.log("clicked:", e.target);
}
});
</script>
<button id="descendant">click me</button>
</div>
jQuery's on()
jQuery makes this functionality available through on(). Given an event name, a selector for the desired descendant, and an event handler, it will resolve your delegated event handling and manage your this context:
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.6.0.js" integrity="sha256-H+K7U5CnXl1h5ywQfKtSj8PCmoN9aaq30gDh27Xc0jk=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<div id="ancestor"><!-- nearest ancestor available to our script -->
<script>
$("#ancestor").on("click", "#descendant", function(e) {
console.log("clicked:", this);
});
</script>
<button id="descendant">click me</button>
</div>
Short and simple: Because the elements you are looking for do not exist in the document (yet).
For the remainder of this answer I will use getElementById for examples, but the same applies to getElementsByTagName, querySelector, and any other DOM method that selects elements.
Possible Reasons
There are three reasons why an element might not exist:
An element with the passed ID really does not exist in the document. You should double check that the ID you pass to getElementById really matches an ID of an existing element in the (generated) HTML and that you have not misspelled the ID (IDs are case-sensitive!).
If you're using getElementById, be sure you're only giving the ID of the element (e.g., document.getElemntById("the-id")). If you're using a method that accepts a CSS selector (like querySelector), be sure you're including the # before the ID to indicate you're looking for an ID (e.g., document.querySelector("#the-id")). You must not use the # with getElementById, and must use it with querySelector and similar. Also note that if the ID has characters in it that aren't valid in CSS identifiers (such as a .; id attributes containing . characters are poor practice, but valid), you have to escape those when using querySelector (document.querySelector("#the\\.id"))) but not when using getElementById (document.getElementById("the.id")).
The element does not exist at the moment you call getElementById.
The element isn't in the document you're querying even though you can see it on the page, because it's in an iframe (which is its own document). Elements in iframes aren't searched when you search the document that contains them.
If the problem is reason 3 (it's in an iframe or similar), you need to look through the document in the iframe, not the parent document, perhaps by getting the iframe element and using its contentDocument property to access its document (same-origin only). The rest of this answer addresses the first two reasons.
The second reason — it's not there yet — is quite common. Browsers parse and process the HTML from top to bottom. That means that any call to a DOM element which occurs before that DOM element appears in the HTML, will fail.
Consider the following example:
<script>
var element = document.getElementById('my_element');
</script>
<div id="my_element"></div>
The div appears after the script. At the moment the script is executed, the element does not exist yet and getElementById will return null.
jQuery
The same applies to all selectors with jQuery. jQuery won't find elements if you misspelled your selector or you are trying to select them before they actually exist.
An added twist is when jQuery is not found because you have loaded the script without protocol and are running from file system:
<script src="//somecdn.somewhere.com/jquery.min.js"></script>
this syntax is used to allow the script to load via HTTPS on a page with protocol https:// and to load the HTTP version on a page with protocol http://
It has the unfortunate side effect of attempting and failing to load file://somecdn.somewhere.com...
Solutions
Before you make a call to getElementById (or any DOM method for that matter), make sure the elements you want to access exist, i.e. the DOM is loaded.
This can be ensured by simply putting your JavaScript after the corresponding DOM element
<div id="my_element"></div>
<script>
var element = document.getElementById('my_element');
</script>
in which case you can also put the code just before the closing body tag (</body>) (all DOM elements will be available at the time the script is executed).
Other solutions include listening to the load [MDN] or DOMContentLoaded [MDN] events. In these cases it does not matter where in the document you place the JavaScript code, you just have to remember to put all DOM processing code in the event handlers.
Example:
window.onload = function() {
// process DOM elements here
};
// or
// does not work IE 8 and below
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
// process DOM elements here
});
Please see the articles at quirksmode.org for more information regarding event handling and browser differences.
jQuery
First make sure that jQuery is loaded properly. Use the browser's developer tools to find out whether the jQuery file was found and correct the URL if it wasn't (e.g. add the http: or https: scheme at the beginning, adjust the path, etc.)
Listening to the load/DOMContentLoaded events is exactly what jQuery is doing with .ready() [docs]. All your jQuery code that affects DOM element should be inside that event handler.
In fact, the jQuery tutorial explicitly states:
As almost everything we do when using jQuery reads or manipulates the document object model (DOM), we need to make sure that we start adding events etc. as soon as the DOM is ready.
To do this, we register a ready event for the document.
$(document).ready(function() {
// do stuff when DOM is ready
});
Alternatively you can also use the shorthand syntax:
$(function() {
// do stuff when DOM is ready
});
Both are equivalent.
Reasons why id based selectors don't work
The element/DOM with id specified doesn't exist yet.
The element exists, but it is not registered in DOM [in case of HTML nodes appended dynamically from Ajax responses].
More than one element with the same id is present which is causing a conflict.
Solutions
Try to access the element after its declaration or alternatively use stuff like $(document).ready();
For elements coming from Ajax responses, use the .bind() method of jQuery. Older versions of jQuery had .live() for the same.
Use tools [for example, webdeveloper plugin for browsers] to find duplicate ids and remove them.
If the element you are trying to access is inside an iframe and you try to access it outside the context of the iframe this will also cause it to fail.
If you want to get an element in an iframe you can find out how here.
As #FelixKling pointed out, the most likely scenario is that the nodes you are looking for do not exist (yet).
However, modern development practices can often manipulate document elements outside of the document tree either with DocumentFragments or simply detaching/reattaching current elements directly. Such techniques may be used as part of JavaScript templating or to avoid excessive repaint/reflow operations while the elements in question are being heavily altered.
Similarly, the new "Shadow DOM" functionality being rolled out across modern browsers allows elements to be part of the document, but not query-able by document.getElementById and all of its sibling methods (querySelector, etc.). This is done to encapsulate functionality and specifically hide it.
Again, though, it is most likely that the element you are looking for simply is not (yet) in the document, and you should do as Felix suggests. However, you should also be aware that that is increasingly not the only reason that an element might be unfindable (either temporarily or permanently).
If script execution order is not the issue, another possible cause of the problem is that the element is not being selected properly:
getElementById requires the passed string to be the ID verbatim, and nothing else. If you prefix the passed string with a #, and the ID does not start with a #, nothing will be selected:
<div id="foo"></div>
// Error, selected element will be null:
document.getElementById('#foo')
// Fix:
document.getElementById('foo')
Similarly, for getElementsByClassName, don't prefix the passed string with a .:
<div class="bar"></div>
// Error, selected element will be undefined:
document.getElementsByClassName('.bar')[0]
// Fix:
document.getElementsByClassName('bar')[0]
With querySelector, querySelectorAll, and jQuery, to match an element with a particular class name, put a . directly before the class. Similarly, to match an element with a particular ID, put a # directly before the ID:
<div class="baz"></div>
// Error, selected element will be null:
document.querySelector('baz')
$('baz')
// Fix:
document.querySelector('.baz')
$('.baz')
The rules here are, in most cases, identical to those for CSS selectors, and can be seen in detail here.
To match an element which has two or more attributes (like two class names, or a class name and a data- attribute), put the selectors for each attribute next to each other in the selector string, without a space separating them (because a space indicates the descendant selector). For example, to select:
<div class="foo bar"></div>
use the query string .foo.bar. To select
<div class="foo" data-bar="someData"></div>
use the query string .foo[data-bar="someData"]. To select the <span> below:
<div class="parent">
<span data-username="bob"></span>
</div>
use div.parent > span[data-username="bob"].
Capitalization and spelling does matter for all of the above. If the capitalization is different, or the spelling is different, the element will not be selected:
<div class="result"></div>
// Error, selected element will be null:
document.querySelector('.results')
$('.Result')
// Fix:
document.querySelector('.result')
$('.result')
You also need to make sure the methods have the proper capitalization and spelling. Use one of:
$(selector)
document.querySelector
document.querySelectorAll
document.getElementsByClassName
document.getElementsByTagName
document.getElementById
Any other spelling or capitalization will not work. For example, document.getElementByClassName will throw an error.
Make sure you pass a string to these selector methods. If you pass something that isn't a string to querySelector, getElementById, etc, it almost certainly won't work.
If the HTML attributes on elements you want to select are surrounded by quotes, they must be plain straight quotes (either single or double); curly quotes like ‘ or ” will not work if you're trying to select by ID, class, or attribute.
I am attempting to create a search bar using a custom HTML component for predictive text input. The way this component is built, it generates several plain HTML children that I need to act on to get full features. Specifically, I need to execute a blur action on one of the generated elements when the user presses escape or enter.
I got it to work using a ref on the custom component and calling getElementsByClassName on the ref, but using getElementsByClassName does not seem like the best solution. It pierces through the virtual and has odd side effects when testing.
This is a snippet of the component being rendered:
<predictive-input id='header-search-bar-input' type='search'
value={this.state.keywords}
ref={(ref: any) => this.predictiveInput = ref}
onKeyDown={(e: React.KeyboardEvent<any>) => this.handleKeyDown(e)}>
</predictive-input>
and the keyDown handler:
private handleKeyDown(e: React.KeyboardEvent<any>) {
// must access the underlying input element of the kat-predictive-input
let input: HTMLElement = this.predictiveInput.getElementsByClassName('header-row-text value')[0] as HTMLElement;
if (e.key === 'Escape') {
// blur the predictive input when the user presses escape
input.blur();
} else if (e.key === 'Enter') {
// commit the search when user presses enter
input.blur();
// handles action of making actual search, using search bar contents
this.commitSearch();
}
}
The element renders two children, one for the bar itself and one for the predictive dropdown. The classes of the underlying in the first are 'header-row-text' and 'value', so the element is correctly selected, but I am worried that this is violating proper React style.
I am using React 16.2, so only callback refs are available. I would rather avoid upgrading, but if a 16.3+ solution is compelling enough, I could consider it.
If you don't have any control over the input then this is the best approach in my opinion.
It's not ideal, but as you're stuck with a 3rd party component you can only choose from the methods that are available to you. In this case, your only real options are to find the element based on its class, or its position in the hierarchy. Both might change if the package is updated, but if I had to choose which would be more stable, I'd go for className.
Is it possible to create an element that will be used as an anchor in polymer. So for example
<template repeat="{{ content in contentitems }}">
<div id="{{ content.id }}">{{content.stuff}}</div>
</template>
Would it be possible to create a hyperlink to the content#id anchor like http://example.com/#someid
Alternatively, we can query that element with querySelector like the below and then scroll it into view if necessary with JavaScript. I'd rather not have to use a JS router however for anchor hyperlinking?
scrollIntoViewFunc(document.querySelector("html /deep/ #someid"))
Here's an actual URL I want to get working: http://megawac.github.io/status-whiskey/#status-408
The Web Component gods (aka Blink engineers) have decided that anchors inside of shadow-roots will not automatically scroll into view like they do in the main document. For this reason, I believe you will have to do something like you showed to handle this in JavaScript.
After brief searching, I couldn't find a reference to this question in the spec, it really needs to be spelled out somewhere.
If you come up with general solution, elementize it and share it back to the community. =P
Let's say you have a simple-element with some child elements with ids as anchors:
<simple-element>
<div id="anchor1"></div>
<div id="anchor2"></div>
</simple-element>
Then you can make a function to scrollIntoView when the hash changes:
window.addEventListener('hashchange', function() {
let targetElement = document.querySelector('simple-element').$[location.hash.substr(1)];
if(targetElement) {
targetElement.scrollIntoView();
}
}, false);
If I have this html:
<div id="myDiv"></div>
and this CSS:
#myDiv{
background:url('../images/someImage.png') no-repeat;
background-size:100%;
width:44px;
height:44px;
}
I need to open a new page when the user taps on myDiv. I have an external js file where I have this:
function bindMyDiv(){
$("#myDiv").bind('tap',function(event, ui){
alert("binding");
})
}
But I don't understand where to call this from the HTML, or if this is even the right way to go about this. Advice?
Try
$("#myDiv").live("tap", function(event){
alert('binding');
});
You can place this in side your onReady javascript file
EDIT:
http://jsfiddle.net/R9e6u/
Everyone here provided pretty good insight on different solutions for you to handle your script, but I don't think that anyone stopped to think SHOULD they help improve your script. "or if this is even the right way to go about this ", the answer is no. And perhaps I'm over-simplifying, but with JQM if you're trying to have a div (or any DOM element for that matter) open a new page simply wrap an anchor tag around around it (or in it, whichever is appropriate) and set your href to href="#myNewPage"and the id on the JQM page that you want to load to id="myNewPage"
jQuery Mobile's frame work is set up to automatically inject JS & AJAX into normal HTML elements to provide a smooth UX. While binding a touch event is sometime needed, this situation doesn't warrant that level of code...thats the beauty of jQuery Mobile =).
Examples of when to bind a touch event: show/hide a dom object, trigger a click for a plug-in etc.
You want to call that function on the pageinit event for the page on which it resides. You could use some other page-events from jQuery Mobile like: pagecreate, pageshow, etc. but I think pageinit is your best-bet.
The implementation would look something like this:
$(document).delegate('#page-id', 'pageinit', function () {
$("#myDiv").bind('tap',function(event, ui){
alert("binding");
})
});
OR
$(document).delegate('#page-id', 'pageinit', bindMyDiv);
You would replace #page-id with the ID of the data-role="page" element in which your div resides.
This method is preferred over event delegation for the #myDiv element because binding directly to an element creates less overhead when the event is triggered. If you use event delegation then the event has to bubble-up to the delegation root.
bangin' my head against this and it's starting to hurt.
I'm having trouble with adding an event to an element.
I'm able to add the event, and then call it immediately with element.fireEvent('click'), but once the element is attached to the DOM, it does not react to the click.
example code:
var el = new Element('strong').setStyle('cursor','pointer');
el.addEvent('click',function () { alert('hi!'); });
el.replaces(old_element); // you can assume old_element exists
el.fireEvent('click'); // alert fires
however, once I attach this to the DOM, the element is not reactive to the click. styles stick (cursor is pointer when I mouseover), but no event fires. tried mouseover as well, to no avail.
any clues here? am I missing something basic? I am doing this all over the place, but in this one instance it doesn't work.
EDIT----------------
ok here's some more code. unfortunately I can't expose the real code, as it's for a project that is still under tight wraps.
basically, the nodes all get picked up as "replaceable", then the json found in the rel="" attribute sets the stage for what it should be replaced by. In this particular instance, the replaced element is a user name that should pop up some info when clicked.
again, if I fire the event directly after attaching it, all is good, but the element does not react to the click once it's attached.
HTML-----------
<p>Example: <span class='_mootpl_' rel="{'text':'foo','tag':'strong','event':'click','action':'MyAction','params':{'var1': 'val1','var2': 'val2'}}"></span></p>
JAVASCRIPT-----
assumptions:
1. below two functions are part of a larger class
2. ROOTELEMENT is set at initialize()
3. MyAction is defined before any parsing takes place (and is properly handled on the .fireEvent() test)
parseTemplate: function() {
this.ROOTELEMENT.getElements('span._mootpl_').each(function(el) {
var _c = JSON.decode(el.get('rel'));
var new_el = this.get_replace_element(_c); // sets up the base element
if (_c.hasOwnProperty('event')) {
new_el = this.attach_event(new_el, _c);
}
});
},
attach_event: function(el, _c) {
el.store(_c.event+'-action',_c.action);
el.store('params',_c.params);
el.addEvent(_c.event, function() {
eval(this.retrieve('click-action') + '(this);');
}).setStyle('cursor','pointer');
return el;
},
Works just fine. Test case: http://jsfiddle.net/2GX66/
debugging this is not easy when you lack content / DOM.
first - do you use event delegation or have event handlers on a parent / the parent element that do event.stop()?
if so, replace with event.preventDefault()
second thing to do. do not replace an element but put it somewhere else in the DOM - like document.body's first node and see if it works there.
if it does work elsewhere, see #1
though I realsie you said 'example code', you should write this as:
new Element('strong', {
styles: {
cursor: "pointer"
},
events: {
click: function(event) {
console.log("hi");
}
}
}).replaces(old_element);
no point in doing 3 separate statements and saving a reference if you are not going to reuse it. you really ought to show the ACTUAL code if you need advice, though. in this snippet you don't even set content text so the element won't show if it's inline. could it be a styling issue, what is the display on the element, inline? inline-block?
can you assign it a class that changes it on a :hover pseudo and see it do it? mind you, you say the cursor sticks which means you can mouseover it - hence css works. this also eliminates the possibility of having any element shims above it / transparent els that can prevent the event from bubbling.
finally. assign it an id in the making. assign the event to a parent element via:
parentEl.addEvent("click:relay(strong#idhere)", fn);
and see if it works that way (you need Element.delegate from mootools-more)
good luck, gotta love the weird problems - makes our job worth doing. it wouldn't be the worst thing to post a url or JSFIDDLE too...