When using querySelectorAll, is there a way to reference the immediate children of the context node, without using IDs?

Question

Say I have an HTML structure like

<div id="a">
  <div id="b">
    <div id="c"></div>
  </div>
</div>

To do a query for the children of "a" using querySelectorAll I can do something like

//Get "b", but not "c"
document.querySelectorAll('#a > div')

My question is: is it possible to do this without the ID, referencing the node directly? I tried doing

var a_div = document.getElementById('a')
a_div.querySelectorAll('> div') //<-- error here

but I get an error telling me that the selector I used is invalid.

And in case anyone is wondering, my real use case would be something more complicated like '> .foo .bar .baz' so I would prefer to avoid manual DOM traversal. Currently I am adding a temporary id to the root div but that seems like an ugly hack...

See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3680876/use-queryselectorall-to-retrieve-direct-children — natevw, Nov 11 '14 at 19:23

score 11 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 29 '14 at 08:18

11

document.querySelector('#a').querySelectorAll(':scope > div')

I am not sure about browser support, but I use it on chrome and chrome mobile packaged apps and it works fine.

answered Nov 29 '14 at 08:18

Peter StJ

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[MDN on `:scope` in `querySelector`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:scope#Browser_compatibility): Chrome, Firefox 32+, Safari 7, not Opera, not IE. – Chris Morgan Jun 30 '15 at 01:02

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

5

No, there isn't a way ^(yet) to reference all childs of some element without using a reference to that element. Because > is a child combinator, which represents a relationship between a parent and child element, a simple selector (a parent) is necessary (which is missing in you example).

In a comment, BoltClock said that the Selectors API Level 2 specification defines a method findAll^{name may change} "which accepts as an argument what will probably be known as a relative selector (a selector that can start with a combinator rather than a compound selector)".
When this is implemented, it can be used as follows:

a_div.findAll('> div');

edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

Community

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answered Jul 11 '12 at 20:18

Rob W

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What is the usual workaround for this though? Is adding a (temporary) id to the root element the only way? – hugomg Jul 11 '12 at 20:23
@missingno Yes. The other method is to loop through all `.childNodes`, and test whether the child is a div using `childNodes[i].nodeName.toUpperCase()=='div'`. – Rob W Jul 11 '12 at 20:28
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More technically, "Because `>` is a *combinator*", you cannot do this with `querySelectorAll()`. In the near future, you'll be able to do this with `findAll()`, which accepts as an argument what will probably be known as a relative selector (a selector that can start with a combinator rather than a compound selector). See the [Selectors API level 2](http://www.w3.org/TR/selectors-api2) spec. – BoltClock Jul 12 '12 at 06:37
@BoltClock Thanks for the info, I've amended my answer. – Rob W Jul 12 '12 at 08:16

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 11 '12 at 20:20

-1

I think I must be misunderstanding your question, but this is how I'm interpreting it..

var a = document.getElementById('a')
var results = a.querySelectorAll('div');

results will hold all your child divs now.

answered Jul 11 '12 at 20:20

jeschafe

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`results` will not only hold the child divs, but **all** descendant divs. – Rob W Jul 11 '12 at 20:20
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I want to exclude the "c" div from the results though. The '#a > div' selector only returns the "b" div. – hugomg Jul 11 '12 at 20:21

When using querySelectorAll, is there a way to reference the immediate children of the context node, without using IDs?

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