DOM Help Please

[pbd22]

Hi.

Is there a way of crawling the DOM without IDs?
I want to get from the below anchor tag, which has the SomeThing()
function, and grab the "some more text" string inside the td tags to
the left.
I would also like to grab the "Some Text" string inside the anchor
tags
along the way.

How could I do this?

Thanks!

<td><a href=javascript:SomeThing()>Some Text</a></td><td></td><td>some
more text</td>

[xprotocol]

On Oct 23, 11:16 pm, pbd22 <[e-mail]:

Hi.

Is there a way of crawling the DOM without IDs?
I want to get from the below anchor tag, which has the SomeThing()
function, and grab the "some more text" string inside the td tags to
the left.
I would also like to grab the "Some Text" string inside the anchor
tags
along the way.

How could I do this?

Thanks!

<td><a href=javascript:SomeThing()>Some Text</a></td><td></td><td>some
more text</td>

There's probably a better way to write whatever it is you're doing.
However assuming you already have a reference to the anchor element
somehow, you could do:
var seccondGrab = anchorReference.innerHTML;
var firstGrab =
anchorReference.parentNode.nextSibling.nextSibling .innerHTML;
The second line will not necessarily work in all browsers. Firefox
for example sees line-breaks as text nodes and will point to those
instead of the HTML element. A crossbrowser JS framework/library may
come in handy if all this DOM traversal is really necessary.

[pbd22]

I think it is the reference to the anchor element that i am struggling
with.
All I have right now is SomeThing(). I have tried passing
SomeThing(this) with
various attempts at traversal (this.parentElement, etc and so on).
Must I have
ID or NAME to get started?

Thanks again.

[RobG]

On Oct 24, 1:16 pm, pbd22 <[e-mail]:

Hi.

Is there a way of crawling the DOM without IDs?
I want to get from the below anchor tag, which has the SomeThing()
function, and grab the "some more text" string inside the td tags to
the left.
I would also like to grab the "Some Text" string inside the anchor
tags
along the way.

How could I do this?

Thanks!

<td><a href=javascript:SomeThing()>Some

Do not use the javascript pseudo-protocol in the href attribute, use a
real URL and add an onclick handler that returns false so that the
link isn't followed if scripting is enabled, something like:

<td><a href="noJavaScript.html" onclick="
getRowText(this);
return false;
">Some

Text</a></td><td></td><td>some

more text</td>

The whole thing might look something like:

<script type="text/javascript>

// Get all text in a table row
function getRowText(el) {
var cell = upToNode(el, 'tr');
return getText(cell);
}

// Go up DOM tree, starting from el, looking for
// an element with tagName tag.
// Return element or undefined.
function upToNode(el, tag) {
tag = tag.toLowerCase();
while (el.parentNode) {
if (el.tagName.toLowerCase() == tag) {
return el;
}
el = el.parentNode;
}
}

function getText(el) {
if (typeof el.textContent == 'string') return el.textContent;
if (typeof el.innerText == 'string') return el.innerText;
}

</script>

<table>
<tr>
<td><a href="noJavaScript.html" onclick="
alert(getRowText(this));
return false;
">Some text</a></td>
<td></td>
<td>some more text</td>
</table>
--
Rob