AddEventListener On NodeList
Answer : There is no way to do it without looping through every element. You could, of course, write a function to do it for you. function addEventListenerList(list, event, fn) { for (var i = 0, len = list.length; i < len; i++) { list[i].addEventListener(event, fn, false); } } var ar_coins = document.getElementsByClassName('coins'); addEventListenerList(ar_coins, 'dragstart', handleDragStart); or a more specialized version: function addEventListenerByClass(className, event, fn) { var list = document.getElementsByClassName(className); for (var i = 0, len = list.length; i < len; i++) { list[i].addEventListener(event, fn, false); } } addEventListenerByClass('coins', 'dragstart', handleDragStart); And, though you didn't ask about jQuery, this is the kind of stuff that jQuery is particularly good at: $('.coins').on('dragstart', handleDragStart); The best I could come up with was ...