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JavaScript JavaScript and the DOM (Retiring) Making Changes to the DOM Removing an Element from the DOM

Posted by bviengineer
bviengineer
16,484 Points

Question asked conflicts with the error message and thus the intended answer.

Question states: "Select the unordered list element and store it in the variable myList"

Answer provided: let myList = document.getElementsByTagName("ul");

Error message received: "You have stored a collection object in 'myList', but you need a single element."

Appears that the question conflicts with the answer being sought or am I misunderstanding the question?

index.html 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>DOM Manipulation</title>
    </head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
    <body>
        <ul>
            <li id="first">First Item</li>
            <li id="second">Second Item</li>
            <li id="third">Third Item</li>
        </ul>
        <script src="app.js"></script>
    </body>
</html>
app.js 
let myList = document.getElementsByTagName("ul");
let firstListItem;

2 Answers

andren
andren
28,558 Points
andren
andren
28,558 Points

The issue is that the getElementsByTagName method always returns a list of elements (HTMLCollection), not a specific element. This is the case even when there is only one element matching the pattern you give it.

And a list of elements is not the same as a single element, which is why the challenge is complaining. If you use bracket syntax to pull out the first item from the returned collection like this:

let myList = document.getElementsByTagName("ul")[0];

Then your code will work.

bviengineer
bviengineer
16,484 Points
bviengineer
bviengineer
16,484 Points

Thank you Andren.