Document.body

In This Article

Returns the <body> or <frameset> node of the current document, or null if no such element exists.

Syntax

var objRef = document.body; 
document.body = objRef;

Example

// in HTML: <body id="oldBodyElement"></body>
alert(document.body.id); // "oldBodyElement"
var aNewBodyElement = document.createElement("body");
aNewBodyElement.id = "newBodyElement";
document.body = aNewBodyElement;
alert(document.body.id); // "newBodyElement"

Notes

document.body is the element that contains the content for the document. In documents with <body> contents, returns the <body> element, and in frameset documents, this returns the outermost <frameset> element.

Though body is settable, setting a new body on a document will effectively remove all the current children of the existing <body> element.

Specification

Specification	Status	Comment
HTML Living Standard The definition of 'Document.body' in that specification.	Living Standard
HTML 5.1 The definition of 'Document.body' in that specification.	Recommendation
HTML5 The definition of 'Document.body' in that specification.	Recommendation
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Specification The definition of 'Document.body' in that specification.	Obsolete
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Specification The definition of 'Document.body' in that specification.	Obsolete	Initial definition.

Feature	Chrome	Edge	Firefox (Gecko)	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari
Basic support	1	(Yes)	2	6	9.6 (possibly earlier)	4 (possibly earlier)

Although document.body is a perfectly acceptable way to select the <body> element in HTML, it's not implemented in Firefox if Content-Type is not set to text/html or application/xhtml+xml. A much safer way of selecting the <body> element is to use document.getElementsByTagName("body"), which should return an array with a single item. This is portable across HTML and XHTML where the Content-Type is not set within the HTTP response header.

Feature	Android	Edge	Firefox Mobile (Gecko)	IE Mobile	Opera Mobile	Safari Mobile
Basic support	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)	5 (probably earlier)

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Contributors to this page: panstav, siilime, tophf, erikadoyle, cvrebert, teoli, Delapouite, MHasan, joshduck, kscarfone, Sheppy, ethertank, Matej Lednar, pusanbear, DR, Nickolay, George3, Jabez, Ptak82, Dria, JesseW

Last updated by: panstav, Jul 27, 2017, 2:30:59 AM