javascript - How to access HTML element without ID?

Question

For instance in the snippet below - how do I access the h1 element knowing the ID of parent element (header-inner div)?

<div id='header-inner'> 
   <div class='titlewrapper'> 
      <h1 class='title'> 
      Some text I want to change
      </h1> 
   </div> 
</div>

Thanks!

Answer 1

function findFirstDescendant(parent, tagname)
{
   parent = document.getElementById(parent);
   var descendants = parent.getElementsByTagName(tagname);
   if ( descendants.length )
      return descendants[0];
   return null;
}

var header = findFirstDescendant("header-inner", "h1");

Finds the element with the given ID, queries for descendants with a given tag name, returns the first one. You could also loop on descendants to filter by other criteria; if you start heading in that direction, i recommend you check out a pre-built library such as jQuery (will save you a good deal of time writing this stuff, it gets somewhat tricky).