DHTML Collections

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Internet Explorer^® 4 up only.

Returns a reference to the collection of elements contained by the object.

[ collAll = ] object.all

[ oObject = ] object.all ( vIndex [ , iSubIndex ] )

collAll	Reference to an array of elements contained by the object.
oObject	Reference to an individual item in the array of elements contained by the object.
vIndex	Number or string specifying the element or collection to retrieve. If this parameter is a number, the method returns the element in the collection at the given position, where the first element has value 0, the second has 1, and so on. If this parameter is a string and there is more than one element with the name or id property equal to the string, the method returns a collection of matching elements.
iSubIndex	Optional. Position of an element to retrieve. This parameter is used when vIndex is a string. The method uses the string to construct a collection of all elements that have a name or id equal to the string and then retrieves from this collection the element at the position specified by iSubIndex.

The all collection includes one element object for each valid HTML tag. If a valid tag has a matching end tag, both tags are represented by the same element object.

The collection returned by the document's all property always includes a reference to the HTML, HEAD, TITLE, and BODY objects regardless of whether the tags are present in the document.

If the document contains invalid or unknown tags, the collection includes one element object for each. Unlike valid end tags, unknown end tags are represented by their own element objects. The order of the element objects is the HTML source order. Although the collection indicates the order of tags, it does not indicate hierarchy.

The following JScript™ example displays the names of all tags in the document in the order the tags appear in the document.

for ( i = 0; i < document.all.length; i ++ ) {
   alert ( document.all ( i ).tagName );
}

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The following JScript™ example uses the item method on the all collection to retrieve all element objects for which the name or ID attribute is set to "sample". Depending on how many times the name or ID is defined in the document, the item method may return null, a single element object, or a collection of element objects. The example uses the length property of the collection to determine whether item returned a collection or a single object.

var oObject = document.all.item ( "sample" );
if ( oObject != null ) {
   if ( oObject.length != null ) {
      for ( i = 0; i < oObject.length; i ++ )
         alert ( oObject ( i ).tagName );
   }
   else alert ( oObject.tagName );
}