How to Check if Variable is HTML Element in Javascript
In this tutorial, you will learn how to check if variable is HTML element in javascript. When HTML is loaded into the browser, it forms a DOM (Document Object Model). The HTMLDocument
object represents the document object which is the root node of the HTML document. The Element
object represents an HTML element, like P, DIV, or any other HTML element.
There are numerous ways to check if a variable is a HTML element or not. We are going to use one of the easiest solutions which involve the usage of the instanceof
and ternary (?
) operators. The ternary operator is also known as the conditional operator which acts similar to the if-else statement. The instanceof operator verifies whether the object is an instance of the specified type
In the following example, we have one global variable and upon click of a button, we will check if the variable is a HTML element or not and display the result on the screen. Please have a look over the code example and the steps given below.
HTML & CSS
- We have 3 elements in the HTML file (
div
,button
, andh1
). Thediv
element is just a wrapper for the rest of the elements. - The
innerText
for thebutton
element is“Check”
and for theh1
element, it is“Result”
. - We have done some basic styling using CSS and added the link to our
style.css
stylesheet inside thehead
element. - We have also included our javascript file
script.js
with ascript
tag at the bottom.
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"> <title>Document</title> </head> <body> <div> <button>Check</button> <h1>Result</h1> </div> <script src="script.js"></script> </body> </html>
body { text-align: center; } div { display: inline-block; } button { display: inline-block; padding: 10px 20px; }
Javascript
- We have selected the
button
element andh1
element using thedocument.querySelector()
method and stored them inbtnCheck
andoutput
variables respectively. - We have a global variable
element
which holds an Element object as its value. - We have attached a
click
event listener to thebutton
element. - In the event handler function, we are using
instanceof
and ternary (?
) operators to verify whetherelement
is a HTML element or not. Depending upon the result of the check, we will assign“Yes”
or“No”
to theresult
variable - We are displaying the
result
in theh1
element using theinnerText
property.
let btnCheck = document.querySelector("button"); let output = document.querySelector("h1"); let element = document.querySelector('div'); btnCheck.addEventListener("click", () => { let result = element instanceof Element || element instanceof HTMLDocument ? "Yes" : "No"; output.innerText = result; });