How to Test Against a Form's "input.placeholder" Attribute for JavaScript Function

Question

I have a script wherein I would like to get the form's placeholder attribute and then use as a conditional in a function like so (this doesn't seem right to me, so I'm not surprised it doesn't work):

if (document.getElementsByName("Name").input.placeholder == "Enter Name") {
    //do something
}

The wrapper function actually takes the form as argument:

function form_function(form) {
    var input = document.getElementsByName("Name");
    var placeholder = input.placeholder;

    if (placeholder == "Empty") {
        // do something
    }
}

I've tried a few different things to no avail. The error console is telling me that the input is undefined. For example, I started with:

var placeholder = form.input.placeholder;

and that didn't work either.

I then ran some alert tests and when I just alert the input I get NodeList object, which I'm not sure how to deal with.

So I tried looping through the NodeList and got some objects I'm unsure how to use.

var inputList = document.getElementsByName("Name");

var inputArray = [];

for (var i = 0; i < inputList.length; i++) {
    inputArray[i] = inputList[i];
    alert(inputArray[i]);
}

Alert gives [object HTMLInputElement]

Basically, I just want to test against the placeholder value in the form with the specific name attribute. Seems I've gone awry...

Thanks.

Answer 1

As @apsillers correctly stated, the elements re turned are in an array so I needed to capture the one I needed. I went with this:

placeholder = document.getElementsByName("Name")[0].placeholder;

and then was able to use this in the function as required.