JS Variable Cannot Change Element Properties-CodePudding

Quick question here, I encountered this problem today while practicing some JS. I wanted to create a basic prototype to loop through a "div" background-color array on click, but I realized that assigning the element property to a variable (instead of using the event target) impedes me to change the actual values.

This is the JS code:

let colors = ["blue", "yellow", "orange", "red"]
let n = 1;

document.querySelectorAll('div').forEach(occurence => {
    occurence.addEventListener('click', (e) => {
        let classes = e.target.className;
        classes = colors[n];
        n  ;
        console.log(classes);
        if (n >= 4) {n = 0;}
    });
});

So, changing the actual e.target.className works just fine, but trying to change the assigned "classes" variable does nothing. I feel like this may be a matter of specificity, or JS being unable to access the actual property values, or some akin beginner mistake.

CodePudding user response：

e.target.className passes by value when you have let classes = e.target.className, so classes contains a copy of its data. Changing classes just changes the copy, rather than what's stored in e.target.classname.

CodePudding user response：

Actually, you are not changing the value of e.target.className. What you do, is assigning the value of e.target.className to the variable/let-binding classes. To assign one of the color values to the className property, the assignment has to be the other way around:

e.target.className = colors[n];