Element: namespaceURI 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 Element.namespaceURI read-only property returns the namespace URI of the element, or null if the element is not in a namespace.

Value

A string, or null.

Examples

In this snippet, an element is being examined for its localName and its namespaceURI. If the namespaceURI returns the XUL namespace and the localName returns "browser", then the node is understood to be a XUL <browser/>.

js
if (
  element.localName === "browser" &&
  element.namespaceURI ===
    "http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"
) {
  // this is a XUL browser
}

Notes

This is not a computed value that is the result of a namespace lookup based on an examination of the namespace declarations in scope. The namespace URI of a node is frozen at the node creation time.

The namespace URI for HTML elements in HTML documents is http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml as in XHTML.

You can create an element with the specified namespaceURI using the document.createElementNS() method.

The DOM does not handle or enforce namespace validation per se. It is up to the DOM application to do any validation necessary. Also note that the namespace prefix, once it is associated with a particular element, cannot be changed.

Specifications

Specification
DOM
# ref-for-dom-element-namespaceuri①

Browser compatibility

desktop mobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
namespaceURI
Chrome – Full support
Chrome 1 (Release date: 2008-12-11)
footnote Full support
Edge – Full support
Edge 12 (Release date: 2015-07-29)
footnote Full support
Firefox – Full support
Firefox 1 (Release date: 2004-11-09)
footnote Full support
Opera – Full support
Opera 12.1 (Release date: 2012-11-20)
footnote Full support
Safari – Full support
Safari 1 (Release date: 2003-06-23)
footnote Full support
Chrome Android – Full support
Chrome Android 18 (Release date: 2012-06-27)
footnote Full support
Firefox for Android – Full support
Firefox for Android 4 (Release date: 2011-03-29)
footnote Full support
Opera Android – Full support
Opera Android 12.1 (Release date: 2012-10-09)
footnote Full support
Safari on iOS – Full support
Safari on iOS 1 (Release date: 2007-06-29)
footnote Full support
Samsung Internet – Full support
Samsung Internet 1 (Release date: 2013-04-27)
footnote Full support
WebView Android – Full support
WebView Android 4.4 (Release date: 2013-12-09)
footnote Full support
WebView on iOS – Full support
WebView on iOS 1 (Release date: 2007-06-29)
footnote Full support

Legend

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

Full support
Full support

See also