How do I get DOM elements of which tagnames start with a prefix

Question

Using javascript, how do I get all DOM elements that start with a certain prefix like <prefix:suffix>

Code example:

<div>
    <foo:bar1>hello</foo:bar1>
</div>
<foo:bar2>world</foo:bar2>

But, without looping through ALL elements (for performance reasons)?

Thanks, Ran

Answer 1

With getElementsByTagNameNS :

document.getElementsByTagNameNS("http://example.com/namespace/for/foo", "*");

(Assuming you are using XHTML with elements imported from another namespace and are actually serving it with the correct content-type).