select document root using jquery

Question

I can select the body and html parts of the document using

$('body')

and

$('html')

respectively, but how do I select the document root?

Why do you want to? You don't *have* to use jQuery for everything - it's perfectly fine to use javascript too. — Ariel, Jul 26 '12 at 09:34
Funny enough `$(document).html()` returns `null` here (using _jQuery 1.71_), while `$(document).text()` returns the expected result. — zrajm, Mar 28 '13 at 18:00

adeneo · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-23T15:54:43.307

36

Not sure what you mean, but to select the document you do

$(document);

To get the contents of the document I'm guessing you need the documentElement, which is just the same as the <html> tag in most enviroments.

$(document.documentElement);

edited Jun 23 '16 at 15:54

answered Jul 26 '12 at 09:33

adeneo

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`document.documentElement` points to the `html` element... just saying :) – Felix Kling Jul 26 '12 at 09:38
Works perfect. Thanks adeneo :) – Peter T. Aug 31 '15 at 10:20
3

Surprising "document" is not inside of a string. – Panzercrisis Jun 23 '16 at 15:50

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 25 '16 at 10:17

4

The root of the DOM is always the html element.
You can get it either with $('html') or $(':root').

The following assertions should always be true:

$('html')[0] === $(':root')[0]
$(':root')[0] === document.documentElement

answered Jul 25 '16 at 10:17

GetFree

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 26 '12 at 09:57

The Document interface inherits from Node, and represents the whole document, such as an HTML page. Although the Document node is conceptually the root of a document, it isn't physically the root - the root node is the first Element node in the Document, and is represented by its documentElement property.

You can select documentElement with following code:

var root = document.documentElement;

OR

$(document.documentElement);

select document root using jquery

3 Answers3