Live vs. Static NodeLists

Although they are both considered NodeList objects, there are 2 varieties of NodeList: live and static.

In most cases, the NodeList is live, which means that changes in the DOM automatically update the collection.

For example, Node.childNodes is live:

const parent = document.getElementById("parent");
let childNodes = parent.childNodes;
console.log(childNodes.length); // let's assume "2"
parent.appendChild(document.createElement("div"));
console.log(childNodes.length); // outputs "3"

In other cases, the NodeList is static, where any changes in the DOM do not affect the content of the collection. The ubiquitous document.querySelectorAll() method is the only API that returns a static NodeList.

It's good to keep this distinction in mind when you choose how to iterate over the items in the NodeList, and whether you should cache the list's length.

Instance properties

NodeList.length Read only

The number of nodes in the NodeList.

Instance methods

NodeList.item()

Returns an item in the list by its index, or null if the index is out-of-bounds.

An alternative to accessing nodeList[i] (which instead returns undefined when i is out-of-bounds). This is mostly useful for non-JavaScript DOM implementations.

NodeList.entries()

Returns an iterator, allowing code to go through all key/value pairs contained in the collection. (In this case, the keys are integers starting from 0 and the values are nodes.)

NodeList.forEach()

Executes a provided function once per NodeList element, passing the element as an argument to the function.

NodeList.keys()

Returns an iterator, allowing code to go through all the keys of the key/value pairs contained in the collection. (In this case, the keys are integers starting from 0.)

NodeList.values()

Returns an iterator allowing code to go through all values (nodes) of the key/value pairs contained in the collection.

Example

It's possible to loop over the items in a NodeList using a for loop:

for (let i = 0; i < myNodeList.length; i++) {
  let item = myNodeList[i];
}

Don't use for...in to enumerate the items in NodeLists, since they will also enumerate its length and item properties and cause errors if your script assumes it only has to deal with element objects. Also, for...in is not guaranteed to visit the properties in any particular order.

for...of loops over NodeList objects correctly:

const list = document.querySelectorAll("input[type=checkbox]");
for (const checkbox of list) {
  checkbox.checked = true;
}

Browsers also support the iterator method (forEach()) as well as entries(), values(), and keys().

Specifications

Browser compatibility