Check if parent window is iframe or not

Question

How can I tell from a page within an iframe, if the parent itself is also within an iframe?

Explanation:

My home page home.html contains an iframe

<iframe src="sample.html"></iframe>

I need to detect if home.html (ie: parent of sample.html) is within an iframe.

Code in sample.html:

if(self==window)
{
 alert('home.html is not in iframe');
}
else
{
 alert('home.html is in iframe');
}

My question is not a duplicate. It's a different case.

• Guffa: It's a bit unclear... Do you have an iframe in a page in an iframe? Do you want to check if a page is in an iframe, or if the page containing the iframe is in an iframe?
• Kimtho6: Duplicate: stackoverflow.com/questions/326069/…
• Kimtho6: What is the differents then? :s
• Mohan Ram: once home.html is an iframe then i need to detect home.html is an iframe from sample.html.
• Mohan Ram: none of the answer works

Answer 1

This is true if a window is not a frame/iframe:

if(self==top)

If you like to see if the parent window of the given window is a frame, use:

if(parent==top)

It's a simple comparision of top (the most top window of the window hierarchy) and another window object (self or parent).

• frumbert: testing top isn't so great if you expect that your frame might live in a frame off-domain. E.g. your site is hosted in someone elses via a frame / iframe reference (as sometimes happens with blog templates sites, etc). Since "top" might be in a different domain, testing parent == top can throw a cross domain error. Try putting a marker in the container frame and test for that (e.g. if (parent.myVar)
• dsdsdsdsd: @frumbert, if 'top' might throw a cross-domain error, wouldn't 'parent' also?
• Dr.Molle: @frumbert: testing a window will not throw an error(parent.myVar is not a test for a window, it's a test for a property of a window, what is slightly different)
• frumbert: @Dr.Molle: Yep of course. So to avoid cross domain errors you have to catch the possible exception. The answer on here : stackoverflow.com/questions/8672721/… : could be extended to test for the iframe (OP) and bail out if it hit a cross domain error, while still catching exceptions.
• Dr.Molle: Nope, of course not. show 1 example where accessing a window-object results in an cross-domain-error(that's all we talk about here, window-objects, nothing more). The linked question has nothing to do with the question here.

Answer 2

Check if window.frameElement is not null and see if its nodeName property is "IFRAME":

var isInIframe = window.frameElement && window.frameElement.nodeName == "IFRAME";

• Oliver: This answer is great because it contains a simple and straight-forward way to access the iframe element which contains the current page (when it's loaded inside such).
• Sheldon R.: I agree with @Oliver. This way is so much simpler than the other two answers above and any other strategy I've seen for dealing with this issue. This should be the accepted answer...
• Ryan Mohr: This fails for cross-origin iframes. Returns the element (such as <iframe> or <object>) in which the window is embedded, or null if the element is either top-level or is embedded into a document with a different script origin; that is, in cross-origin situations. developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/frameElement

Answer 3

var isInIFrame = (window.location != window.parent.location);
if(isInIFrame==true){
 // iframe
}
else {
 // no iframe
}

• Chris Barr: or just var isInIFrame = window.location !== window.parent.location; would work as well.
• Oliver: There's an edge case in which this won't work: if you've loaded the same page into the iframe that contains the iframe.
• oriadam: also, cross-domain or similar protection will cause a script error when accessing window.parent propery
• Stefan P: @oriadam if it throws an error you can assume it's in an iframe