Event.composed - Web APIs

The read-only composed property of the Event interface returns a Boolean which indicates whether or not the event will propagate across the shadow DOM boundary into the standard DOM.

Note: This property was formerly named scoped.

Syntax

const isComposed = Event.composed;

Value

A Boolean which is true if the event will cross from the shadow DOM into the standard DOM after reaching the shadow root. (That is, the first node in the shadow DOM in which the event began to propagate.)

All UA-dispatched UI events are composed (click/touch/mouseover/copy/paste, etc.). Most other types of events are not composed, and so will return false. For example, this includes synthetic events that are created without their composed option wil set to true.

Propagation only occurs if the bubbles property is also true. However, capturing only composed events are also handled at host as if they were in AT_TARGET phase. You can determine the path the event will follow through the shadow root to the DOM root by calling composedPath().

If this value is false, the shadow root will be the last node to be offered the event.

Examples

In our composed-composed-path example (see it live), we define two trivial custom elements, <open-shadow> and <closed-shadow>, both of which take the contents of their text attribute and insert them into the element's shadow DOM as the text content of a <p> element. The only difference between the two is that their shadow roots are attached with their modes set to open and closed respectively.

The first definition looks like this, for example:

customElements.define('open-shadow',
  class extends HTMLElement {
    constructor() {
      super();

      let pElem = document.createElement('p');
      pElem.textContent = this.getAttribute('text');

      let shadowRoot = this.attachShadow({mode: 'open'})
        .appendChild(pElem);

  }
});

We then insert one of each element into our page:

<open-shadow text="I have an open shadow root"></open-shadow>
<closed-shadow text="I have a closed shadow root"></closed-shadow>

Then include a click event listener on the <html> element:

document.querySelector('html').addEventListener('click',function(e) {
  console.log(e.composed);
  console.log(e.composedPath());
});

When you click on the <open-shadow> element and then the <closed-shadow> element, you'll notice two things.

The composed property returns true beause the click event is always able to propagate across shadow boundaries.
You'll notice a difference in the value of composedPath for the two elements.

The <open-shadow> element's composed path is this:

Array [ p, ShadowRoot, open-shadow, body, html, HTMLDocument https://mdn.github.io/web-components-examples/composed-composed-path/, Window ]

Whereas the <closed-shadow> element's composed path is a follows:

Array [ closed-shadow, body, html, HTMLDocument https://mdn.github.io/web-components-examples/composed-composed-path/, Window ]

In the second case, the event listeners only propagate as far as the <closed-shadow> element itself, but not to the nodes inside the shadow boundary.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
DOM The definition of 'composed' in that specification.	Living Standard

Browser compatibility

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
`composed`	Chrome Full support 53	Edge Full support 79	Firefox Full support 52	IE No support No	Opera Full support 40	Safari Full support Yes	WebView Android Full support 53	Chrome Android Full support 53	Firefox Android Full support 52	Opera Android Full support 41	Safari iOS Full support Yes	Samsung Internet Android Full support 6.0

Legend

Full support: Full support
No support: No support