Show/hide ‘div’ using JavaScript

How to show or hide an element:

In order to show or hide an element, manipulate the element’s style property. In most cases, you probably just want to change the element’s display property:

element.style.display = 'none';           // Hide
element.style.display = 'block';          // Show
element.style.display = 'inline';         // Show
element.style.display = 'inline-block';   // Show

Alternatively, if you would still like the element to occupy space (like if you were to hide a table cell), you could change the element’s visibility property instead:

element.style.visibility = 'hidden';      // Hide
element.style.visibility = 'visible';     // Show

Hiding a collection of elements:

If you want to hide a collection of elements, just iterate over each element and change the element’s display to none:

function hide (elements) {
  elements = elements.length ? elements : [elements];
  for (var index = 0; index < elements.length; index++) {
    elements[index].style.display = 'none';
  }
}

// Usage:
hide(document.querySelectorAll('.target'));
hide(document.querySelector('.target'));
hide(document.getElementById('target'));

hide(document.querySelectorAll('.target'));

function hide (elements) {
  elements = elements.length ? elements : [elements];
  for (var index = 0; index < elements.length; index++) {
    elements[index].style.display = 'none';
  }
}

<div class="target">This div will be hidden.</div>

<span class="target">This span will be hidden as well.</span>

Showing a collection of elements:

Most of the time, you will probably just be toggling between display: none and display: block, which means that the following may be sufficient when showing a collection of elements.

You can optionally specify the desired display as the second argument if you don’t want it to default to block.

function show (elements, specifiedDisplay) {
  elements = elements.length ? elements : [elements];
  for (var index = 0; index < elements.length; index++) {
    elements[index].style.display = specifiedDisplay || 'block';
  }
}

// Usage:
var elements = document.querySelectorAll('.target');
show(elements);

show(elements, 'inline-block'); // The second param allows you to specify a display value

var elements = document.querySelectorAll('.target');

show(elements, 'inline-block'); // The second param allows you to specify a display value

show(document.getElementById('hidden-input'));

function show (elements, specifiedDisplay) {
  elements = elements.length ? elements : [elements];
  for (var index = 0; index < elements.length; index++) {
    elements[index].style.display = specifiedDisplay || 'block';
  }
}

<div class="target" style="display: none">This hidden div should have a display of 'inline-block' when it is shown.</div>

<span>Inline span..</span>

<input id="hidden-input" />

Alternatively, a better approach for showing the element(s) would be to merely remove the inline display styling in order to revert it back to its initial state. Then check the computed display style of the element in order to determine whether it is being hidden by a cascaded rule. If so, then show the element.

function show (elements, specifiedDisplay) {
  var computedDisplay, element, index;

  elements = elements.length ? elements : [elements];
  for (index = 0; index < elements.length; index++) {
    element = elements[index];

    // Remove the element's inline display styling
    element.style.display = '';
    computedDisplay = window.getComputedStyle(element, null).getPropertyValue('display');

    if (computedDisplay === 'none') {
        element.style.display = specifiedDisplay || 'block';
    }
  }
}

show(document.querySelectorAll('.target'));

function show (elements, specifiedDisplay) {
  var computedDisplay, element, index;

  elements = elements.length ? elements : [elements];
  for (index = 0; index < elements.length; index++) {
    element = elements[index];

    // Remove the element's inline display styling
    element.style.display = '';
    computedDisplay = window.getComputedStyle(element, null).getPropertyValue('display');

    if (computedDisplay === 'none') {
        element.style.display = specifiedDisplay || 'block';
    }
  }
}

<span class="target" style="display: none">Should revert back to being inline.</span>

<span class="target" style="display: none">Inline as well.</span>

<div class="target" style="display: none">Should revert back to being block level.</div>

<span class="target" style="display: none">Should revert back to being inline.</span>

(If you want to take it a step further, you could even mimic what jQuery does and determine the element’s default browser styling by appending the element to a blank iframe (without a conflicting stylesheet) and then retrieve the computed styling. In doing so, you will know the true initial display property value of the element and you won’t have to hardcode a value in order to get the desired results.)

Toggling the display:

Similarly, if you would like to toggle the display of an element or collection of elements, you could simply iterate over each element and determine whether it is visible by checking the computed value of the display property. If it’s visible, set the display to none, otherwise remove the inline display styling, and if it’s still hidden, set the display to the specified value or the hardcoded default, block.

function toggle (elements, specifiedDisplay) {
  var element, index;

  elements = elements.length ? elements : [elements];
  for (index = 0; index < elements.length; index++) {
    element = elements[index];

    if (isElementHidden(element)) {
      element.style.display = '';

      // If the element is still hidden after removing the inline display
      if (isElementHidden(element)) {
        element.style.display = specifiedDisplay || 'block';
      }
    } else {
      element.style.display = 'none';
    }
  }
  function isElementHidden (element) {
    return window.getComputedStyle(element, null).getPropertyValue('display') === 'none';
  }
}

// Usage:
document.getElementById('toggle-button').addEventListener('click', function () {
  toggle(document.querySelectorAll('.target'));
});

document.getElementById('toggle-button').addEventListener('click', function () {
    toggle(document.querySelectorAll('.target'));
});

function toggle (elements, specifiedDisplay) {
  var element, index;

  elements = elements.length ? elements : [elements];
  for (index = 0; index < elements.length; index++) {
    element = elements[index];

    if (isElementHidden(element)) {
      element.style.display = '';

      // If the element is still hidden after removing the inline display
      if (isElementHidden(element)) {
        element.style.display = specifiedDisplay || 'block';
      }
    } else {
      element.style.display = 'none';
    }
  }
  function isElementHidden (element) {
    return window.getComputedStyle(element, null).getPropertyValue('display') === 'none';
  }
}

.target { display: none; }

<button id="toggle-button">Toggle display</button>

<span class="target">Toggle the span.</span>

<div class="target">Toggle the div.</div>