Document: forms 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 forms read-only property of the Document interface returns an HTMLCollection listing all the <form> elements contained in the document.

Note: Similarly, you can access a list of a form's component user input elements using the HTMLFormElement.elements property.

Value

An HTMLCollection object listing all of the document's forms. Each item in the collection is a HTMLFormElement representing a single <form> element.

If the document has no forms, the returned collection is empty, with a length of zero.

Examples

Getting form information

html
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>document.forms example</title>
  </head>

  <body>
    <form id="robby">
      <input
        type="button"
        onclick="alert(document.forms[0].id);"
        value="robby's form" />
    </form>

    <form id="dave">
      <input
        type="button"
        onclick="alert(document.forms[1].id);"
        value="dave's form" />
    </form>

    <form id="paul">
      <input
        type="button"
        onclick="alert(document.forms[2].id);"
        value="paul's form" />
    </form>
  </body>
</html>

Getting an element from within a form

js
const selectForm = document.forms[index];
const selectFormElement = document.forms[index].elements[index];

Named form access

html
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>document.forms example</title>
  </head>

  <body>
    <form name="login">
      <input name="email" type="email" />
      <input name="password" type="password" />
      <button type="submit">Log in</button>
    </form>

    <script>
      const loginForm = document.forms.login; // Or document.forms['login']
      loginForm.elements.email.placeholder = "test@example.com";
      loginForm.elements.password.placeholder = "password";
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# dom-document-forms-dev

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
forms

Legend

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

Full support
Full support
Partial support
Partial support
Has more compatibility info.

See also