Document.open()
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
document.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.
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.
Gecko-specific notes
Starting with Gecko 1.9, 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.
Starting with Gecko 1.9.2, document.open()
uses the principal of the document whose URI it uses,
instead of fetching the principal off the stack. As a result, you can no longer call
document.write()
into an untrusted document from chrome, even using wrappedJSObject
. See Security check basics for more about principals.
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
:
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:
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