document.getElementByID('') error

[will1480]

I am dynamically creating some of my IDs within my page and want to check to see if that ID exists before calling document.getElementById("id1") and creating a javascript error. Is there a better way than creating an array of document IDs and then checking it versus all of those before calling the document.getElementById() funtion? Any help would be appreciated

[john_k]

The best way is to simply check if document.getElementById("id1") returns anything. The simplest way is something like this:

if document.getElementById("id1") 
{ 
 // the element exists 
} else { 
 // element not found 
} 

[Bernard Marx]

True, true

document.getElementById

. will not produce an error if it doesn't find anything. It just returns

null

.

An error will only occur if you try to access a property / method of that

null

. You only need to check if you are doing that (which is quite likely).

Use john_k's approach.

[will1480]

Thanks, Thats what I though, and I swear that I did exactly. I will try again, thanks for the input.

[Bernard Marx]

...although he seems to have missed out the
brackets around the condition:

if(document.getElementById('theId'))
{

}

[will1480]

yeah, i noticed the brackets missing too, I am somewhat expierienced, but the idea was right. Not sure what I messed up the first time. Thanks for the input everyone :)

[john_k]

missed out the brackets around the condition

Sorry about that - I was taking a break from some ASP work when I posted that response. Sometimes I forget to switch my language chip.