JavaScript Reference

Quick Reference

The Element className property sets or returns an element’s class attribute.

<!-- html element to place output -->
<p id="my_output" class="class1 class2 class3"></p>

Getting the class attribute:

// variable
let my_classes = document.getElementById('my_output').className;

// output to the HTML element
document.getElementById('my_output').innerHTML = my_classes;

Setting the class attribute:

document.getElementById('my_output').className = 'new_style';

Output

class1 class2 class3 new_style

Syntax

Getting the class attribute:

element.className

Setting the class attribute:

element.className = class

JavaScript Notes:

  • When using JavaScript, single or double quotation marks are acceptable and work identically to one another; choose whichever you prefer, and stay consistent
  • JavaScript is a case-sensitive language; firstName is NOT the same as firstname
  • Arrays count starting from zero NOT one; so item 1 is position [0], item 2 is position [1], and item 3 is position [2] … and so on
  • JavaScript variables must begin with a letter, $, or _
  • JavaScript variables are case sensitive (x is not the same as X)

We’d like to acknowledge that we learned a great deal of our coding from W3Schools and TutorialsPoint, borrowing heavily from their teaching process and excellent code examples. We highly recommend both sites to deepen your experience, and further your coding journey. We’re just hitting the basics here at 1SMARTchicken.