jQuery – How to get the tag name

To get the element tag name, you can use the tagName function. There are two ways to use it :

1) .get(0).tagName

Select an element that has a class name of “classTag1”, and use the .get(0).tagName function to display its tag name.


$('.classTag1').get(0).tagName; 

2) .[0].tagName

2. Select an element that has a class name of “classTag1”, and use the .[0].tagName function to display its tag name.


$('.classTag1')[0].tagName;

Example


<html>
<head>
<title>jQuery Get Tag Name</title>
 
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
 
</head>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
 
$(document).ready(function(){
	
    var $tag = $('p')[0].tagName; //'P'
    alert($tag);
	
    var $tag = $('.classTag1')[0].tagName; //'DIV'
    alert($tag);
	
    var $tag = $('#idTag1')[0].tagName; //'DIV'
    alert($tag);
	
    var $tag = $('p').get(0).tagName; //'P'
    alert($tag);
	
    var $tag = $('.classTag1').get(0).tagName; //'DIV'
    alert($tag);
	
    var $tag = $('#idTag1').get(0).tagName; //'DIV'
    alert($tag);	

});

</script>
<body>

<h1>jQuery Get Tag Name</h1>

    <p>
    	This is paragrah 1
    </p>
	
	<div class="classTag1">
		This is class='classTag1'
	</div>
	
	<div id="idTag1">
		This is id='idTag1'
	</div>

</body>
</html>

mkyong

Founder of Mkyong.com, passionate Java and open-source technologies. If you enjoy my tutorials, consider making a donation to these charities.

12 Comments
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rahamath ulla
9 years ago

i have a form i have to search the particular field by using search how can i search in that by using jquery, searching field should be displayed other fields should be hiden when it display how can i do it plzz help any one Thanks in advance.

kavin
12 years ago

its not working for this case,please help asap

Unknown

Jamo
13 years ago

$(“form”).is(“form”)
true
$(“form”).is(“li”)
false

coimbatore hotels
14 years ago

working for me. Thanks for sharing.

jaron barends
15 years ago

Also, tagName is not a function, but an attribute. Upon reading “use the .get(0).tagName function”, I used automatically typed “.get(0).tagName();” in my code (with the parentheses after tagName). To avoid confusion, it would be better to change “function” in “attribute”.

Umair Jabbar
15 years ago

Doesn’t work !

joe
13 years ago
Reply to  Umair Jabbar

fuck off

Guilherme Dupont
15 years ago

You can access simply as it:

$(element).attr(“tagName”)

Ymox
13 years ago

With jQuery 1.7.1 and further,

$('form').attr('tagName')

returns

undefined

(I think it might be so from 1.6.1, see jQuery documentation dicussion about Attribute vs. Element at http://api.jquery.com/prop/#prop1). You need to use

$('form').prop('tagName')
Dan
14 years ago

that doesn’t works as good as the other solution (using jscript on the dom element directly)

Ingmar
16 years ago

Hi there,

this has nothing to do with jQuery – ‘tagName’ as a function does exist neither in jQuery nor in JavaScript. ‘tagName’ is a property of every DOM-Element – so you can use ist like ‘document.getElementById(“myId”).tagName’. The only jQuerything in your post is how you retrieve the DOM-Element: $(‘myselector’).get(0) and $(‘myselector’)[0] both just return the first DOM-Element which matches ‘myselector’ – after that, you are leaving the jQuery-Scope and are just accessing the DOM-element-property ‘tagName’