Document.body

The Document.body property represents the <body> or <frameset> node of the current document, or null if no such element exists.

Syntax

const objRef = document.body
document.body = objRef

Example

// Given this HTML: <body id="oldBodyElement"></body>
alert(document.body.id); // "oldBodyElement"

const 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 the body property 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

Browser compatibility

Update compatibility data on GitHub

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
`body`	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 2 Notes Full support 2 Notes Notes The `body` property was implemented on the `HTMLDocument` interface in Firefox for a long time, hence `document.body` would not return the `<body>` element if the document's `Content-Type` was not set to `text/html` or `application/xhtml+xml` (or if it came from `DOMParser.parseFromString` without the `text/html` type being used). This has been fixed in Firefox 60.	IE Full support 6	Opera Full support 9.6	Safari Full support 4	WebView Android Full support ≤37	Chrome Android Full support 18	Firefox Android Full support 4 Notes Full support 4 Notes Notes The `body` property was implemented on the `HTMLDocument` interface in Firefox for a long time, hence `document.body` would not return the `<body>` element if the document's `Content-Type` was not set to `text/html` or `application/xhtml+xml` (or if it came from `DOMParser.parseFromString` without the `text/html` type being used). This has been fixed in Firefox 60.	Opera Android Full support 10.1	Safari iOS Full support 5	Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0

Legend

Full support: Full support
See implementation notes.: See implementation notes.