Element: firstElementChild property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The Element.firstElementChild read-only property returns an element's first child Element, or null if there are no child elements.

Element.firstElementChild includes only element nodes. To get all child nodes, including non-element nodes like text and comment nodes, use Node.firstChild.

Value

An Element object, or null.

Examples

html
    
  
  • First (1)
    • 
  
  • Second (2)
    • 
  
  • Third (3)
    •
js
const list = document.getElementById("list");
console.log(list.firstElementChild.textContent);
// logs "First (1)"

Specifications

Specification
DOM
# ref-for-dom-parentnode-firstelementchild①

Browser compatibility

See also