HTMLFormElement: elements 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 elements property of the HTMLFormElement interface returns an HTMLFormControlsCollection listing all the listed form controls associated with the <form> element.

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

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

Independently, you can obtain just the number of associated form controls using the length property. You can get a list of all of the forms contained within a given document using the document's forms property.

Value

An HTMLFormControlsCollection containing all non-image controls associated with the form. This is a live collection; if form controls are associated with or disassociated 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 document by following a preorder, depth-first traversal of the tree. This is called tree order.

Only the following form controls are returned:

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

Examples

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.

html
<form id="my-form">
  <label>
    Username:
    <input type="text" name="username" />
  </label>
  <label>
    Full name:
    <input type="text" name="full-name" />
  </label>
  <label>
    Password:
    <input type="password" name="password" />
  </label>
</form>

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

Associated form controls

This example demonstrates how the HTMLFormControlsCollection contains the form controls associated with the form, rather than the controls physically nested in the <form>.

The first form is full, with four form controls: one <fieldset> and three <input> elements. The <legend> and <label> elements are not listed form controls. The second form is sparse, with only one nested form control: a single <object> element. All the form controls in the full form are associated with the sparse form via their form attribute.

html
<form id="fullForm">
  This form looks full, but it has no associated form controls
  <fieldset form="sparseForm">
    <legend>This is a legend</legend>
    <label>A form control: <input form="sparseForm" /></label>
    <label>Another form control: <input form="sparseForm" /></label>
    <label>Yet another form control: <input form="sparseForm" /></label>
  </fieldset>
</form>

<form id="sparseForm">
  <object data="lone-form-control.jpg">Lone form control</object>
</form>

We use the elements property to get the HTMLFormControlsCollection for each form.

js
const sparse = document.getElementById("sparseForm").elements;
const full = document.getElementById("fullForm").elements;

The collection includes the form element's associated form controls, meaning all the <button>, <fieldset>, <input>, <object>, <output>, <select>, <textarea>, and form-associated custom elements associated with the form, even if those elements are nested in another form, or not nested in any form.

js
console.log(`sparse form: ${sparse.length}`); // sparse form: 5
console.log(`full form: ${full.length}`); // full form: 0

The collection's form controls are in the same order in which they appear in the document.

js
console.log(`first member: ${sparse[0].tagName}`); // first member: FIELDSET
console.log(`last member: ${sparse[sparse.length - 1].tagName}`); // last member: OBJECT

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.

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

// Iterate over the form controls
for (const input of inputs) {
  if (input.nodeName === "INPUT" && input.type === "text") {
    // Update text input
    input.value = input.value.toLocaleUpperCase();
  }
}

Disabling form controls

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

// Iterate over the form controls
for (const input of inputs) {
  // Disable all form controls
  input.setAttribute("disabled", "");
}

Specifications

Specification

HTML
# dom-form-elements-dev

Browser compatibility

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HTMLFormElement: elements property

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