The Document.characterSet
read-only property returns the character encoding of the document that it's currently rendered with. (A character encoding is a set of characters and how to interpret bytes into those characters.)
A “character set” and a “character encoding” are related, but different. Despite the name of this property, it returns the encoding.
Users can override the developer-specified encoding inside the Content-Type header or inline like <meta charset="utf-8">
, such as with Firefox's View → Text Encoding menu. This override is provided to fix incorrect developer-specified encodings that result in garbled text.
The properties document.charset
and document.inputEncoding
are legacy aliases for document.characterSet
. Do not use them any more.
Syntax
var string = document.characterSet;
Examples
<button onclick="console.log(document.characterSet);"> Log character encoding </button> <!-- displays document's character encoding in the dev console, such as "ISO-8859-1" or "UTF-8" -->
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
DOM The definition of 'characterSet' in that specification. |
Living Standard | Initial definition. |
Browser compatibility
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
characterSet | Chrome
Full support
1
| Edge
Full support
≤79
| Firefox
Full support
Yes
| IE
?
| Opera
Full support
Yes
| Safari
Full support
Yes
| WebView Android
Full support
45
| Chrome Android
Full support
45
| Firefox Android
Full support
Yes
| Opera Android
Full support
Yes
| Safari iOS
Full support
Yes
| Samsung Internet Android
Full support
5.0
|
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- Compatibility unknown
- Compatibility unknown
- See implementation notes.
- See implementation notes.
- Uses a non-standard name.
- Uses a non-standard name.