Select div using wildcard ID

Question

How to select a div using it\'s ID but with a widcard?

If the DIV\'s ID is statusMessage_1098, I would like to select it in some way like document

Answer 1

If you don't want to use jQuery then there is another easier way to do this:

Assign a class - for an example name it "message", and use the following:

function getElementsByClass(searchClass,node,tag) {
    var classElements = new Array();
    if ( node == null )
        node = document;
    if ( tag == null )
        tag = '*';
    var els = node.getElementsByTagName(tag);
    var elsLen = els.length;
    var pattern = new RegExp("(^|\\s)"+searchClass+"(\\s|$)");
    for (i = 0, j = 0; i < elsLen; i++) {
        if ( pattern.test(els[i].className) ) {
            classElements[j] = els[i];
            j++;
        }
    }
    return classElements;
}

Here how you call it:

var messages = getElementsByClass("message");

for(var index=0; index < messages.length; index++) {
 // prompt the content of the div
 //alert(message[index].innerText);
}