Web/API/HTMLFormElement/elements

The HTMLFormElement property elements returns an HTMLFormControlsCollection listing all the form controls contained in the <form> element. Independently, you can obtain just the number of form controls using the length property.

You can access a particular form control in the returned collection by using either an index or the element's name or id.

Prior to HTML 5, the returned object was an HTMLCollection, on which HTMLFormControlsCollection is based.

Note: Similarly, you can get a list of all of the forms contained within a given document using the document's forms property.

Syntax

nodeList = HTMLFormElement.elements

Value

An HTMLFormControlsCollection containing all non-image controls in the form. This is a live collection; if form controls are added to or removed from the form, this collection will update to reflect the change.

The form controls in the returned collection are in the same order in which they appear in the form by following a preorder, depth-first traversal of the tree. This is called tree order.

The elements included by HTMLFormElement.elements and HTMLFormElement.length are the following:

<button>
<fieldset>
<input> (with the exception that any whose type is "image" are omitted for historical reasons)
<object>
<output>
<select>
<textarea>

No other elements are included in the list returned by elements, which makes it an excellent way to get at the elements most important when processing forms.

Example

Quick syntax example

In this example, we see how to obtain the list of form controls as well as how to access its members by index and by name or ID.

<form id="my-form">
  <input type="text" name="username">
  <input type="text" name="full-name">
  <input type="password" name="password">
</form>

var inputs = document.getElementById("my-form").elements;
var inputByIndex = inputs[0];
var inputByName = inputs["username"];

Accessing form controls

This example gets the form's element list, then iterates over the list, looking for <input> elements of type "text" so that some form of processing can be performed on them.

var inputs = document.getElementById("my-form").elements;

// Iterate over the form controls
for (i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) {
  if (inputs[i].nodeName === "INPUT" && inputs[i].type === "text") {
    // Update text input
    inputs[i].value.toLocaleUpperCase();
  }
}

Disabling form controls

var inputs = document.getElementById("my-form").elements;

// Iterate over the form controls
for (i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) {
  // Disable all form controls
  inputs[i].setAttribute("disabled", "");
}

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
HTML Living StandardThe definition of 'HTMLFormElement.elements' in that specification.	Living Standard
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML SpecificationThe definition of 'HTMLFormElement.elements' in that specification.	Obsolete	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

Update compatibility data on GitHub

	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
`elements`	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support 9	Opera Full support 8	Safari Full support 3	WebView Android Full support 1	Chrome Android Full support 18	Firefox Android Full support 4	Opera Android Full support 10.1	Safari iOS Full support 1	Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0

Legend

Full support: Full support

HTMLFormElement.elements by Mozilla Contributors is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.