Document: readystatechange event

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 readystatechange event is fired when the readyState attribute of a document has changed.

This event is not cancelable and does not bubble.

Syntax

Use the event name in methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

addEventListener("readystatechange", (event) => { })

onreadystatechange = (event) => { }

Event type

A generic Event.

Examples

Live example

HTML

html

<div class="controls">
  <button id="reload" type="button">Reload</button>
</div>

<div class="event-log">
  <label for="eventLog">Event log:</label>
  <textarea
    readonly
    class="event-log-contents"
    rows="8"
    cols="30"
    id="eventLog"></textarea>
</div>

CSS

body {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-areas: "control log";
}

.controls {
  grid-area: control;
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
}

.event-log {
  grid-area: log;
}

.event-log-contents {
  resize: none;
}

label,
button {
  display: block;
}

#reload {
  height: 2rem;
}

JavaScript

const log = document.querySelector(".event-log-contents");
const reload = document.querySelector("#reload");

reload.addEventListener("click", () => {
  log.textContent = "";
  setTimeout(() => {
    window.location.reload(true);
  }, 200);
});

window.addEventListener("load", (event) => {
  log.textContent = `${log.textContent}load\n`;
});

document.addEventListener("readystatechange", (event) => {
  log.textContent = `${log.textContent}readystate: ${document.readyState}\n`;
});

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", (event) => {
  log.textContent = `${log.textContent}DOMContentLoaded\n`;
});

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML # event-readystatechange

Browser compatibility

Help improve MDN

Learn how to contribute

This page was last modified on ⁨Sep 25, 2025⁩ by MDN contributors.

View this page on GitHub • Report a problem with this content