Difference between getElementById methods from DOM and Document classes
dom, gwt
Solution
Basically nothing. At some point during GWT's lifecycle the whole DOM related code was rewritten into the `dom` package. In the new package for each HTML tag a specific Element class is available, like `DivElement` to provide specific methods for these tags. For example in you example if you would use it to look up div elements you could directly use the `DivElement`. The code would for both versions look as follows:
DivElement divID = (DivElement) Document.get().getElementById("divID");
or
DivElement divID = (DivElement) DOM.getElementById("divID").cast();
To be backward compatible the old code was kept. All Widget classes use the old `Element` class which is also returned by `DOM.getElementById`. The old `Element` class was changed and extends the new `Element` class, without any extra's. So they are basically the same. In general you should just use the `Document.get()`. This all can make it somewhat confusing when working with elements.
Problem
`GWT` offers two ways of retrieving an HTML element by its unique `ID`. What's the diference (if there is one) between : - DOM.getElementById("divID") : Gets the element associated with the given unique id within the entire document. @param id the id whose associated element is to be retrieved @return the associated element, or null if none is found - Document.get().getElementById("divID") : Returns the Element whose id is given by elementId. If no such element exists, returns null. Behavior is not defined if more than one element has this id. @param elementId the unique id value for an element @return the matching element