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JavaScript

Posted by Sondra Coffin
Sondra Coffin
6,909 Points

Why does the tagName need to be in CAPS when using event.target.tagName?

Just out of curiosity, is there some particular reason why the tagName being referred to when using event.target.tagName must be in all capital letters (e.g., event.target.tagName == 'LI')? It doesn't seem to work if you use lowercase letters (or, at least not in the Treehouse workspace, anyway), which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Is this "just the way it is," with no real rhyme or reason to it, or is there some fundamental purpose for this syntax? If I missed an explanation in the video, I apologize, but I don't recall hearing anything about it, just picking up on it in the examples the instructor typed out in the Event Object video from the JavaScript and the DOM course: https://teamtreehouse.com/library/the-event-object-2

Thank you in advance to anyone who takes the time to answer this!

4 Answers

Seth Kroger
Seth Kroger
56,414 Points
Seth Kroger
Seth Kroger
56,414 Points

The older versions of HTML back when JavaScript was first created used all caps for tag names by convention instead of today's lowercase. To stay backwards-compatible with older code tagName() still returns all uppercase and has been stuck that way.

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points
Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

For some reason, the function node.tagName() (where you replace node with the node object) always returns letters in UPPERCASE. JavaScript is also case-sensitive, meaning the character "A" and the character "a" are totally different.

Tagging Guil Hernandez

I hope this helps :grin:

Happy coding! :tada:

:dizzy: ~Alex :dizzy:

Sondra Coffin
Sondra Coffin
6,909 Points

Thanks, Alex!

Garrett Siegel
Garrett Siegel
7,968 Points
Garrett Siegel
Garrett Siegel
7,968 Points

Seth Kroger and Alexander Davison Thanks for sharing this. I was just watching the video "The Event Object" and wondered why. Found my answer!