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. |
Browser compatibility
We're converting our compatibility data into a machine-readable JSON format. This compatibility table still uses the old format, because we haven't yet converted the data it contains. Find out how you can help!
Feature | Chrome | Edge | Firefox (Gecko) | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | 1 | (Yes) | 2[1] | 6 | 9.6 (possibly earlier) | 4 (possibly earlier) |
Feature | Android | Edge | Firefox Mobile (Gecko) | IE Mobile | Opera Mobile | Safari Mobile |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes)[1] | (Yes) | (Yes) | 5 (probably earlier) |
[1] 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.