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.

interactive

The document has finished loading and the document has been parsed but sub-resources such as scripts, images, stylesheets and frames are still loading. The state indicates that the DOMContentLoaded event is about to fire.

complete

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

Examples

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Different states of readiness

js
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

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

readystatechange as an alternative to load event

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

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

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

Specifications

Specification
HTML>
# current-document-readiness>

Browser compatibility

See also