Document: firstElementChild property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The Document.firstElementChild read-only property returns the document's first child Element, or null if there are no child elements.

For HTML documents, this is usually the only child, the root <html> element.

See Element.firstElementChild for the first child element of specific elements within a document.

Value

A Element object, or null.

Examples

js
document.firstElementChild;
// returns the root <html> element, the only child of the document

Specifications

Specification
DOM
# ref-for-dom-parentnode-firstelementchild①

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
firstElementChild

Legend

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Full support
Full support

See also