getElementById() wildcard

I got a div, and there i got some childnodes in undefined levels.

Now I have to change the ID of every element into one div. How to realize?

I thought, because they have upgoing IDs, so if the parent is id=’path_test_maindiv’ then the next downer would be ‘path_test_maindiv_child’, and therefore I thought, I’d solve that by wildcards, for example:

document.getElementById('path_test_*')

Is this possible? Or are there any other ways?

Answer

Not in native JavaScript. You have various options:

1) Put a class and use getElementsByClassName but it doesn’t work in every browser.

2) Make your own function. Something like:

function getElementsStartsWithId( id ) {
  var children = document.body.getElementsByTagName('*');
  var elements = [], child;
  for (var i = 0, length = children.length; i < length; i++) {
    child = children[i];
    if (child.id.substr(0, id.length) == id)
      elements.push(child);
  }
  return elements;
}

3) Use a library or a CSS selector. Like jQuery 😉