Element has no method hasAttribute, Why?

Question

I'm trying to iterate "up" through the DOM nodes from a given element to get the first parent element which has the attribute 'animated'.

var el = evt.target;
    console.log(el);
while (!el.hasAttribute('animated'))
   { el = el.parentNode; }
return el;
    console.log(el);

Throws error:

>>>Uncaught TypeError: Object #<HTMLDocument> has no method 'hasAttribute'

How is this possible? I've clearly declared the variable el and the first log is correct .

Quentin · Accepted Answer

The document object:

Is a node
Is the parentNode of the root element (if you were using HTML that would be the <html> element)
Is not an element.

Only elements have attributes, so only element objects have a hasAttribute method.

You need to stop testing when you reach the document object (or when you aren't testing an element any longer).

while (
    el.nodeType === 1 && 
    (!el.hasAttribute('animated'))
) {

Farhan Ahmad · Answer

var el = evt.target is a document object and therefore does not have a hasAttribute attribute.

Donate For Us