The getAttribute()
method of the Element
interface returns the value of a specified attribute on the element. If the given attribute does not exist, the value returned will either be null
or ""
(the empty string); see Non-existing attributes for details.
Syntax
let attribute = element.getAttribute(attributeName);
where
attribute
is a string containing the value ofattributeName
.attributeName
is the name of the attribute whose value you want to get.
Examples
const div1 = document.getElementById('div1'); const align = div1.getAttribute('align'); alert(align); // Shows the value of align for the element with id="div1"
Description
Lower casing
When called on an HTML element in a DOM flagged as an HTML document, getAttribute()
lower-cases its argument before proceeding.
Non-existing attributes
Essentially all web browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, recent versions of Opera, Safari, Konqueror, and iCab, as a non-exhaustive list) return null
when the specified attribute does not exist on the specified element; this is what the current DOM specification draft specifies. The old DOM 3 Core specification, on the other hand, says that the correct return value in this case is actually the empty string, and some DOM implementations implement this behavior. The implementation of getAttribute()
in XUL (Gecko) actually follows the DOM 3 Core specification and returns an empty string. Consequently, you should use element.hasAttribute()
to check for an attribute's existence prior to calling getAttribute()
if it is possible that the requested attribute does not exist on the specified element.
Retrieving nonce values
For security reasons, CSP nonces from non-script sources, such as CSS selectors, and .getAttribute("nonce")
calls are hidden.
let nonce = script.getAttribute('nonce'); // returns empty string
Instead of retrieving the nonce from the content attribute, use the nonce
property:
let nonce = script.nonce;
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
DOM The definition of 'getAttribute()' in that specification. |
Living Standard |
Browser compatibility
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
getAttribute | Chrome Full support 1 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support 23 | IE Full support 8 | Opera Full support 8 | Safari Full support 1.3 | WebView Android Full support 1 | Chrome Android Full support 18 | Firefox Android Full support 23 | Opera Android Full support 10.1 | Safari iOS Full support 1 | Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0 |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support