How to get an element from an iframe

Question

I want to get an element from an iframe using JavaScript. I've tried the following:

var iframe = document.getElementById("iframe id");

var iframeWindow = iframe.contentWindow || iframe.contentDocument.parentWindow;

 iframe.onload = function(){
 alert(iframeWindow.getElementById('notice'));
 };

Can anyone help me get this working?

with cross domain

thanks for reply

• Alex K.: Is the irfame src on the same domain? What you posted should work, what happens? (also you should accept some answers!)
• Alex K.: Undeleted it, the original question I read as asking how to get an iframe reference

Answer 1

Assuming its all on the same domain;

var ifr = document.getElementById('the_iframes_id');
//or window.frames[x].
var doc = ifr.contentDocument || ifr.contentWindow.document;
alert(doc.getElementById('notice'));

If its not on the same domain, you cannot access it for security reasons.

• jayesh: i wont to do with cross domain this can not help me
• Andy E: @jayesh: nothing can help you, read up on the same origin policy.

Answer 2

You are out of luck if you want to do this across domains. Javascript's security model will not allow it.

I don't know what you are trying to accomplish, but you might be able to get what you need with server-side scripting. A Perl/PHP/Python/Ruby/whatever script generally has the possibility of retrieving any web page you'd need. It could then parse out the bit you need and return this to your Javascript via AJAX calls.

Of course this is more complicated than just using JS, and assumes that the iframe's content is not dynamic, based on cookies or other session things at this moment.

Answer 3

document.getElementById('iframeResult').contentWindow.document.getElementById('buttonId')

where iframeResult is Id of iframe and buttonId is Id of element