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JavaScript JavaScript and the DOM (Retiring) Getting a Handle on the DOM Practice Selecting Elements

Posted by louiseretzlaff
louiseretzlaff
8,325 Points

Making use of a descendent selector

Hello,

Here I have to select the 3 list items in the <nav> Element in the HTML. It told me to use descendant selectors but there’s no style sheet to get the descendant selectors.

js/app.js 
let navigationLinks =  document.querySelectorAll('ul');
let galleryLinks;
let footerImages;
index.html 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Nick Pettit | Designer</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/normalize.css">
    <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Changa+One|Open+Sans:400italic,700italic,400,700,800' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/main.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/responsive.css">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  </head>
  <body>
    <header>
      <a href="index.html" id="logo">
        <h1>Nick Pettit</h1>
        <h2>Designer</h2>
      </a>
      <nav>
        <ul>
          <li><a href="index.html" class="selected">Portfolio</a></li>
          <li><a href="about.html">About</a></li>
          <li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
        </ul>
      </nav>
    </header>
    <div id="wrapper">
      <section>
        <ul id="gallery">
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-01.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-01.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Experimentation with color and texture.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-02.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-02.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Playing with blending modes in Photoshop.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </section>
      <footer>
        <a href="http://twitter.com/nickrp"><img src="img/twitter-wrap.png" alt="Twitter Logo" class="social-icon"></a>
        <a href="http://facebook.com/nickpettit"><img src="img/facebook-wrap.png" alt="Facebook Logo" class="social-icon"></a>
        <p>&copy; 2016 Nick Pettit.</p>
      </footer>
    </div>
  <script src="js/app.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

1 Answer

Tim Oltman
Tim Oltman
7,730 Points
Tim Oltman
Tim Oltman
7,730 Points

Hi louiseretzlaff,

You can select descendants in CSS by simply including them after a space in your selector. For example, the following selects all "li" elements that are descendants of a "ul" element.

let navigationLinks =  document.querySelectorAll('ul li');

Here is another example that will select all "li" elements that are descendants of a "ul" elements that are descendants of "nav" elements. You would want to use this if you have multiple lists on your page and you only wanted to select the nav bar list elements. 

let navigationLinks =  document.querySelectorAll('nav ul li');
Ikechukwu Arum
Ikechukwu Arum
5,337 Points
Ikechukwu Arum
Ikechukwu Arum
5,337 Points

don't forget the nested elements ul, li and a In the nav element

let navigationLinks = document.querySelectorAll('nav ul li>a');