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Document: readyState property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨July 2015⁩.

The Document.readyState property describes the loading state of the document. When the value of this property changes, a readystatechange event fires on the document object.

Value

The readyState of a document can be one of following:

loading

The document is still loading (that is, the HTML parser is still working).

interactive

The document has been parsed but sub-resources such as deferred and module scripts, images, stylesheets, and frames are still loading. Once in this state, and the deferred and module scripts have executed, the DOMContentLoaded event fires.

complete

The document and all sub-resources have finished loading. The state indicates that the load event is about to fire.

Examples

>

Different states of readiness

switch (document.readyState) {
  case "loading":
    // The document is loading.
    break;
  case "interactive": {
    // The document has finished loading and we can access DOM elements.
    // Sub-resources such as scripts, images, stylesheets and frames are still loading.
    const span = document.createElement("span");
    span.textContent = "A <span> element.";
    document.body.appendChild(span);
    break;
  }
  case "complete":
    // The page is fully loaded.
    console.log(
      `The first CSS rule is: ${document.styleSheets[0].cssRules[0].cssText}`,
    );
    break;
}

readystatechange as an alternative to DOMContentLoaded event

// Alternative to DOMContentLoaded event
document.onreadystatechange = () => {
  if (document.readyState === "interactive") {
    initApplication();
  }
};

readystatechange as an alternative to load event

// Alternative to load event
document.onreadystatechange = () => {
  if (document.readyState === "complete") {
    initApplication();
  }
};

readystatechange as event listener to insert or modify the DOM before DOMContentLoaded

document.addEventListener("readystatechange", (event) => {
  if (event.target.readyState === "interactive") {
    initLoader();
  } else if (event.target.readyState === "complete") {
    initApp();
  }
});

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Opera Safari Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet WebView Android WebView on iOS
readyState 1 12 3.6
11Opera Presto fires 'complete' late after the 'load' event (in an incorrect order as per HTML5 standard specification).
1 18 4
11Opera Presto fires 'complete' late after the 'load' event (in an incorrect order as per HTML5 standard specification).
1 1.0 4.4 1

See also

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Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/readyState