Document: anchors property

Deprecated: This feature is no longer recommended. Though some browsers might still support it, it may have already been removed from the relevant web standards, may be in the process of being dropped, or may only be kept for compatibility purposes. Avoid using it, and update existing code if possible; see the compatibility table at the bottom of this page to guide your decision. Be aware that this feature may cease to work at any time.

The anchors read-only property of the Document interface returns a list of all of the anchors in the document.

Value

Examples

js
if (document.anchors.length >= 5) {
  console.log("found too many anchors");
}

The following is an example that auto populates a Table of Contents with every anchor on the page:

html
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <title>Test</title>
    <script>
      function init() {
        const toc = document.getElementById("toc");
        for (const anchor of document.anchors) {
          const li = document.createElement("li");
          const newAnchor = document.createElement("a");
          newAnchor.href = "#" + anchor.name;
          newAnchor.textContent = anchor.text;
          li.appendChild(newAnchor);
          toc.appendChild(li);
        }
      }
    </script>
  </head>
  <body onload="init()">
    <h1>Title</h1>
    <h2><a name="contents">Contents</a></h2>
    <ul id="toc"></ul>

    <h2><a name="plants">Plants</a></h2>
    <ol>
      <li>Apples</li>
      <li>Oranges</li>
      <li>Pears</li>
    </ol>

    <h2><a name="veggies">Veggies</a></h2>
    <ol>
      <li>Carrots</li>
      <li>Celery</li>
      <li>Beats</li>
    </ol>
  </body>
</html>

View on JSFiddle

Notes

For reasons of backwards compatibility, the returned set of anchors only contains those anchors created with the name attribute, not those created with the id attribute.

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-document-anchors

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
anchors
Deprecated

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support
Partial support
Partial support
Deprecated. Not for use in new websites.
Has more compatibility info.