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
Feature | Chrome | Edge | Firefox (Gecko) | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | 1 | (Yes) | 2 | 6 | 9.6 (possibly earlier) | 4 (possibly earlier) |
-
Although document.body is a perfectly acceptable way to select the
<body>
element in HTML, it's not implemented in Firefox ifContent-Type
is not set totext/html
orapplication/xhtml+xml
. A much safer way of selecting the<body>
element is to usedocument.getElementsByTagName("body")
, which should return an array with a single item. This is portable across HTML and XHTML where theContent-Type
is not set within the HTTP response header.
Feature | Android | Edge | Firefox Mobile (Gecko) | IE Mobile | Opera Mobile | Safari Mobile |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | 5 (probably earlier) |