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
<ul id="list">
  <li>First (1)</li>
  <li>Second (2)</li>
  <li>Third (3)</li>
</ul>

<script>
  const list = document.getElementById("list");
  console.log(list.firstElementChild.textContent);
  // logs "First (1)"
</script>

Specifications

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

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also