Document: documentElement 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 documentElement read-only property of the Document interface returns the
Element that is the root element of the document (for
example, the <html> element for HTML documents).
Value
An Element object.
Examples
js
const rootElement = document.documentElement;
const firstTier = rootElement.childNodes;
// firstTier is a NodeList of the direct children of the root element
// such as <head> and <body>
for (const child of firstTier) {
// do something with each direct child of the root element
}
Notes
For any non-empty HTML document, documentElement will always be an
<html> element. For any non-empty XML document,
documentElement will always be whatever element is the root element of the
document.
Specifications
| Specification |
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| DOM # ref-for-dom-document-documentelement① |
Browser compatibility
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Legend
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- Full support
- Full support