[javascript] Get class list for element with jQuery

Is there a way in jQuery to loop through or assign to an array all of the classes that are assigned to an element?

ex.

<div class="Lorem ipsum dolor_spec sit amet">Hello World!</div>

I will be looking for a "special" class as in "dolor_spec" above. I know that I could use hasClass() but the actual class name may not necessarily be known at the time.

Update:

As @Ryan Leonard pointed out correctly, my answer doesn't really fix the point I made my self... You need to both trim and remove double spaces with (for example) string.replace(/ +/g, " ").. Or you could split the el.className and then remove empty values with (for example) arr.filter(Boolean).

const classes = element.className.split(' ').filter(Boolean);

or more modern

const classes = element.classList;

Old:

With all the given answers, you should never forget to user .trim() (or $.trim())

Because classes gets added and removed, it can happen that there are multiple spaces between class string.. e.g. 'class1 class2       class3'..

This would turn into ['class1', 'class2','','','', 'class3']..

When you use trim, all multiple spaces get removed..

Thanks for this - I was having a similar issue, as I'm trying to programatically relate objects will hierarchical class names, even though those names might not necessarily be known to my script.

In my script, I want an <a> tag to turn help text on/off by giving the <a> tag [some_class] plus the class of toggle, and then giving it's help text the class of [some_class]_toggle. This code is successfully finding the related elements using jQuery:

$("a.toggle").toggle(function(){toggleHelp($(this), false);}, function(){toggleHelp($(this), true);});

function toggleHelp(obj, mode){
    var classList = obj.attr('class').split(/\s+/);
    $.each( classList, function(index, item){
    if (item.indexOf("_toggle") > 0) {
       var targetClass = "." + item.replace("_toggle", "");
       if(mode===false){$(targetClass).removeClass("off");}
       else{$(targetClass).addClass("off");}
    }
    });
} 

I had a similar issue, for an element of type image. I needed to check whether the element was of a certain class. First I tried with:

$('<img>').hasClass("nameOfMyClass"); 

but I got a nice "this function is not available for this element".

Then I inspected my element on the DOM explorer and I saw a very nice attribute that I could use: className. It contained the names of all the classes of my element separated by blank spaces.

$('img').className // it contains "class1 class2 class3"

Once you get this, just split the string as usual.

In my case this worked:

var listOfClassesOfMyElement= $('img').className.split(" ");

I am assuming this would work with other kinds of elements (besides img).

Hope it helps.

On supporting browsers, you can use DOM elements' classList property.

$(element)[0].classList

It is an array-like object listing all of the classes the element has.

If you need to support old browser versions that don't support the classList property, the linked MDN page also includes a shim for it - although even the shim won't work on Internet Explorer versions below IE 8.

You can follow something like this.

$('#elementID').prop('classList').add('yourClassName')
$('#elementID').prop('classList').remove('yourClassName')

Here you go, just tweaked readsquare's answer to return an array of all classes:

function classList(elem){
   var classList = elem.attr('class').split(/\s+/);
    var classes = new Array(classList.length);
    $.each( classList, function(index, item){
        classes[index] = item;
    });

    return classes;
}

Pass a jQuery element to the function, so that a sample call will be:

var myClasses = classList($('#myElement'));

The question is what Jquery is designed to do.

$('.dolor_spec').each(function(){ //do stuff

And why has no one given .find() as an answer?

$('div').find('.dolor_spec').each(function(){
  ..
});

There is also classList for non-IE browsers:

if element.classList.contains("dolor_spec") {  //do stuff

A bit late, but using the extend() function lets you call "hasClass()" on any element, e.g.:
var hasClass = $('#divId').hasClass('someClass');

(function($) {
$.extend({
    hasClass: new function(className) {
        var classAttr = $J(this).attr('class');
        if (classAttr != null && classAttr != undefined) {
            var classList = classAttr.split(/\s+/);
            for(var ix = 0, len = classList.length;ix < len;ix++) {
                if (className === classList[ix]) {
                    return true;
                }
            }
        }
        return false;
    }
}); })(jQuery);

var classList = $(element).attr('class').split(/\s+/);
$(classList).each(function(index){

     //do something

});

$('div').attr('class').split(' ').each(function(cls){ console.log(cls);})

Try This. This will get you the names of all the classes from all the elements of document.

$(document).ready(function() {
var currentHtml="";
$('*').each(function() {
    if ($(this).hasClass('') === false) {
        var class_name = $(this).attr('class');
        if (class_name.match(/\s/g)){
            var newClasses= class_name.split(' ');
            for (var i = 0; i <= newClasses.length - 1; i++) {
                if (currentHtml.indexOf(newClasses[i]) <0) {
                    currentHtml += "."+newClasses[i]+"<br>{<br><br>}<br>"
                }
            }
        }
        else
        {
            if (currentHtml.indexOf(class_name) <0) {
                currentHtml += "."+class_name+"<br>{<br><br>}<br>"
            }
        }
    }
    else
    {
        console.log("none");
    }
});
$("#Test").html(currentHtml);

});

Here is the working example: https://jsfiddle.net/raju_sumit/2xu1ujoy/3/

You should try this one:

$("selector").prop("classList")

It returns an array of all current classes of the element.

Why has no one simply listed.

$(element).attr("class").split(/\s+/);

EDIT: Split on /\s+/ instead of ' ' to fix @MarkAmery's objection. (Thanks @YashaOlatoto.)

Might this can help you too. I have used this function to get classes of childern element..

function getClickClicked(){
    var clickedElement=null;
    var classes = null;<--- this is array
    ELEMENT.on("click",function(e){//<-- where element can div,p span, or any id also a class
        clickedElement = $(e.target);
        classes = clickedElement.attr("class").split(" ");
        for(var i = 0; i<classes.length;i++){
            console.log(classes[i]);
        }
        e.preventDefault();
    });
}

In your case you want doler_ipsum class u can do like this now calsses[2];.

Here is a jQuery plugin which will return an array of all the classes the matched element(s) have

;!(function ($) {
    $.fn.classes = function (callback) {
        var classes = [];
        $.each(this, function (i, v) {
            var splitClassName = v.className.split(/\s+/);
            for (var j = 0; j < splitClassName.length; j++) {
                var className = splitClassName[j];
                if (-1 === classes.indexOf(className)) {
                    classes.push(className);
                }
            }
        });
        if ('function' === typeof callback) {
            for (var i in classes) {
                callback(classes[i]);
            }
        }
        return classes;
    };
})(jQuery);

Use it like

$('div').classes();

In your case returns

["Lorem", "ipsum", "dolor_spec", "sit", "amet"]

You can also pass a function to the method to be called on each class

$('div').classes(
    function(c) {
        // do something with each class
    }
);

Here is a jsFiddle I set up to demonstrate and test http://jsfiddle.net/GD8Qn/8/

Minified Javascript

;!function(e){e.fn.classes=function(t){var n=[];e.each(this,function(e,t){var r=t.className.split(/\s+/);for(var i in r){var s=r[i];if(-1===n.indexOf(s)){n.push(s)}}});if("function"===typeof t){for(var r in n){t(n[r])}}return n}}(jQuery);

javascript provides a classList attribute for a node element in dom. Simply using

  element.classList

will return a object of form

  DOMTokenList {0: "class1", 1: "class2", 2: "class3", length: 3, item: function, contains: function, add: function, remove: function…}

The object has functions like contains, add, remove which you can use