Document: open() method
The Document.open()
method opens a document for
writing.
This does come with some side effects. For example:
- All event listeners currently registered on the document, nodes inside the document, or the document's window are removed.
- All existing nodes are removed from the document.
Syntax
js
open()
Parameters
None.
Return value
A Document
object instance.
Examples
The following simple code opens the document and replaces its content with a number of different HTML fragments, before closing it again.
js
document.open();
document.write("<p>Hello world!</p>");
document.write("<p>I am a fish</p>");
document.write("<p>The number is 42</p>");
document.close();
Notes
An automatic document.open()
call happens when
document.write()
is called after the page has loaded.
Content Security
This method is subject to the same same-origin policy as other properties, and does not work if doing so would change the document's origin.
Three-argument document.open()
There is a lesser-known and little-used three-argument version of
document.open()
, which is an alias of Window.open()
(see
its page for full details).
This call, for example opens github.com in a new window, with its opener set to
null
:
js
document.open("https://www.github.com", "", "noopener=true");
Two-argument document.open()
Browsers used to support a two-argument document.open()
, with the
following signature:
js
document.open(type, replace);
Where type
specified the MIME type of the data you are writing (e.g.
text/html
) and replace if set (i.e. a string of "replace"
)
specified that the history entry for the new document would replace the current history
entry of the document being written to.
This form is now obsolete; it won't throw an error, but instead just forwards to
document.open()
(i.e. is the equivalent of just running it with no
arguments). The history-replacement behavior now always happens.
Specifications
Specification |
---|
HTML Standard # dom-document-open-dev |
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser