Document: forms property

The forms read-only property of the Document interface returns an HTMLCollection listing all the <form> elements contained in the document.

Note: Similarly, you can access a list of a form's component user input elements using the HTMLFormElement.elements property.

Value

An HTMLCollection object listing all of the document's forms. Each item in the collection is a HTMLFormElement representing a single <form> element.

If the document has no forms, the returned collection is empty, with a length of zero.

Examples

Getting form information

html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>document.forms example</title>
  </head>

  <body>
    <form id="robby">
      <input
        type="button"
        onclick="alert(document.forms[0].id);"
        value="robby's form" />
    </form>

    <form id="dave">
      <input
        type="button"
        onclick="alert(document.forms[1].id);"
        value="dave's form" />
    </form>

    <form id="paul">
      <input
        type="button"
        onclick="alert(document.forms[2].id);"
        value="paul's form" />
    </form>
  </body>
</html>

Getting an element from within a form

const selectForm = document.forms[index];
const selectFormElement = document.forms[index].elements[index];

Named form access

html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>document.forms example</title>
  </head>

  <body>
    <form name="login">
      <input name="email" type="email" />
      <input name="password" type="password" />
      <button type="submit">Log in</button>
    </form>

    <script>
      const loginForm = document.forms.login; // Or document.forms['login']
      loginForm.elements.email.placeholder = "test@example.com";
      loginForm.elements.password.placeholder = "password";
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard # dom-document-forms-dev

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser