Nested tag name with getElementsByTagName doesn't work

Question

I have the following div that contains the table and its data queried from database ```

Food items include:
Papaya+salt	This includes papaya and salt
Baked chicken	This includes a chicken thide and kethup
Strawberry Sting	Sugar, color and water

``` That table is defined in a page.aspx and here is my code used to sort that table data alphabetically ``` OldFunc = window.onload; window.onload = OnLoad; function OnLoad(){ try{ var pathName = window.location.pathname.toLowerCase(); if( pathName=="/Resources/Glossary.aspx") { sort_it(); } OldFunc(); } catch(e) { } } function TermDefinition(def_term,def_desc) { this.def_term=def_term; this.def_desc=def_desc; } function sort_it() { var gloss_list=document.getElementsByTagName('td'); v…

Accepted Answer

Invalid:

```
desc_list=document.getElementsByTagName('td p');
```

You can't pass a css selector to that function, only a tag name like `div`\ `span` `input` etc'.

You might want to use:

```
desc_list = $('td p');
```

Since you tagged the question with jQuery, or `document.querySelectorAll` for vanilla js:

```
desc_list = document.querySelectorAll('td p');
```

Nested tag name with getElementsByTagName doesn't work

Solution

Problem