Select Element By Class in IE Quirks Mode

Question

I am trying to create a bookmarklet for a page that is rendering in IE in quirks mode. I have no control over the source of the page so telling me to change the doctype will not work.

Anyway, I am trying to get an element by its class but it seems getElementsByClassName and querySelectorAll do not work in quirks mode. Are there any other ways to get this done short of walking the dom?

@GitaarLAB All solutions will have the walk the DOM if queryselector and the native method are not available. — epascarello, Mar 28 '13 at 20:15
@epascarello: I agree. Then ultimately the only correct answer would be 'No', since the asker asks: *'Are there any other ways to get this done short of walking the dom?'* On the other hand, I still get amazed sometimes (what makes SO great). — GitaarLAB, Mar 28 '13 at 20:25

kennebec · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-28T23:58:37.647

3

You can make a utility just for browsers that can't do querySelector- note that this example returns an Array, not a nodelist.

function classReunion(classname, tag, parent){
    var A= [], elements, L, who,
    rx= RegExp(/'\\b'+classname+'\\b');
    tag= tag || '*';
    parent= parent || document;
    elements= parent.getElementsByTagName(tag);
    L= elements.length;
    while(L){
        who= elements[--L];
        if(rx.test(who.className)) A.push(who);
    }
    return A;
}

The old browsers do rely on 'walking' the dom to collect groups of elements by class.

edited Mar 28 '13 at 23:58

answered Mar 28 '13 at 20:06

kennebec

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This is the nicest version I've ever seen. And you are the first I see that uses capital L (with a modified) reverse while loop iterater just like me. Thank you again, I can't upvote enough! – GitaarLAB Mar 28 '13 at 20:21

Select Element By Class in IE Quirks Mode

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