D3 Selecting SVG Text Elements

Question

I have several SVG text elements like these at the bottom:

<svg width="750" height="3860"><g transform="translate(10,30)">
<rect class="bar negative Tuvalu" x="29.51594399999999" y="0" width="528.934056" country="Tuvalu" height="20" style="stroke: #ffffff;"></rect>
...
<text class="recipient Somalia unselected_text" y="40" x="558.45" style="font-size: 14px;" country="Somalia" dx="3" dy="-0.45em">Somalia -79.7545</text>
<text class="recipient Tuvalu" y="20" x="558.45" style="font-size: 14px;" country="Tuvalu" dx="3" dy="-0.45em">Tuvalu -85.2432</text>
...

I'm trying to select only the text elements by bar using this where countryname is a classname:

var className = "text." + countryname
var textNode = d3.select("#barchart").select(className)

but the result I get in Chrome is an array of 1 where the 0 position is null. If I select by just ".{countryname}", it works but I want to only specify the text nodes. The first way actually works in my one graph, but when I create a new graph with different data, it doesn't work.

Answer 1

I reproduced your simplified code and it's working as expected. So you will have to show us more.

<div id="barchart">
<svg width="750" height="3860">
    <g transform="translate(10,30)">
    <rect class="bar negative Tuvalu" x="29.51594399999999" y="0" width="528.934056" country="Tuvalu" height="20" style="stroke: #ffffff;"></rect>
    <text class="recipient Somalia unselected_text" y="40" x="558.45" style="font-size: 14px;" country="Somalia" dx="3" dy="-0.45em">Somalia -79.7545</text>
    <text class="recipient Tuvalu" y="20" x="558.45" style="font-size: 14px;" country="Tuvalu" dx="3" dy="-0.45em">Tuvalu -85.2432</text>
    </g>
</svg>
</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
    var countryname = 'Somalia';
    var className = "text." + countryname;
    var textNode = d3.select("#barchart").select(className);
    console.log(textNode);
</script>

BTW, you can also filter the selection set by class name if you need more control:

var textNode = d3.select("#barchart").selectAll("svg text").filter(function(d, i){ return this.classList.contains(countryname); });