Document.readyState

Summary

The Document.readyState property of a document describes the loading state of the document.

Values

The readyState of a document can be one of following:

loading

The document is still loading.

interactive

The document has finished loading and the document has been parsed but sub-resources such as images, stylesheets and frames are still loading.

complete

The document and all sub-resources have finished loading. The state indicates that the load event is about to fire.

When the value of this property changes a readystatechange event fires on the document object.

Syntax

var string = document.readyState;

Examples

Different states of readiness

switch (document.readyState) {
  case "loading":
    // The document is still loading.
    break;
  case "interactive":
    // The document has finished loading. We can now access the DOM elements.
    var span = document.createElement("span");
    span.textContent = "A <span> element.";
    document.body.appendChild(span);
    break;
  case "complete":
    // The page is fully loaded.
    console.log("The first CSS rule is: " + document.styleSheets[0].cssRules[0].cssText);
    break;
}

readystatechange as an alternative to DOMContentLoaded event

// alternative to DOMContentLoaded event
document.onreadystatechange = function () {
  if (document.readyState === "interactive") {
    initApplication();
  }
}

readystatechange as an alternative to load event

// alternative to load event
document.onreadystatechange = function () {
  if (document.readyState === "complete") {
    initApplication();
  }
}

readystatechange as event listener to insert or modify the DOM before DOMContentLoaded

document.addEventListener('readystatechange', event => {
  if (event.target.readyState === "interactive") {
    initLoader();
  }
  else if (event.target.readyState === "complete") {
    initApp();
  }
});

Specification

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!

[1] Only support 'complete'. Opera Presto fire 'complete' late after the 'load' event (in an incorrect order as per HTML5 standard specification).

[2] Internet Explorer 9 and 10 have bugs where the 'interactive' state can be fired too early before the document has finished parsing.

[3] When introduced with IE 4, the property was available for only the document, embed, img, link, object, script, and style objects. IE 5 expanded coverage to all HTML element objects.

See also

• readystatechange event
• DOMContentLoaded event
• load event