HTML - DOM Document forms Property
The forms is a read-only property used for returning all the form elements present within HTML document as a collection. The elements present in the collection are sorted and are presented in the same order as they appear in the HTML document.
Syntax
document.forms;
Properties
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| length | It return the number of <form> element present in HTML document. |
Methods
Below table shows a list of methods offered by DOM forms collection.
| Methods | Description |
|---|---|
| [index] | To return the <form> element from the collection at the given index. Indexing starts from 0 and null is returned if the index is out of bound. |
| item(index) | To return the <form> element from the collection at the given index. Indexing starts from 0 and null is returned if the index is out of range. It is similar to first method. |
| namedItem(id) | To return the <form> element from the collection with the given id. Null is returned if the id doesnt exist. |
Return Value
It returns an HTMLCollection which lists all the <form> elements present in the document.
Examples of HTML DOM Document 'forms' Property
The following examples illustrates use of forms properties and methods.
Get Number of <form> Elements
In the following example, length property is used to return the number of <form> elements in document.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>
HTML DOM Document forms Property
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="FORM1">
Fruit <input type="text" name="fname" value="Mango">
</form>
<form id="FORM2">
Age <input type="text" name="Age" value="22">
</form>
<form id="FORM3">
Password: <input type="password" name="pass" value="test">
</form>
<br>
<button onclick="fun()">Click me</button>
<p id="form"></p>
<script>
function fun() {
let y = document.forms.length;
document.getElementById("form").innerHTML = "Number of form elements : " + y;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
Get Text Content of First <form> Element
The following example returns text content of the first <form> element using [index] method.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>
HTML DOM Document forms Property
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="FORM1">
Fruit <input type="text" name="fname" value="Mango">
</form>
<form id="FORM2">
Age <input type="text" name="Age" value="22">
</form>
<form id="FORM3">
Password: <input type="password" name="pass" value="test">
</form>
<br>
<button onclick="fun()">Click me</button>
<p id="Sample">form id :<br></p>
<p id="form"></p>
<script>
function fun() {
let x = document.forms[0].textContent
+"<br>";
document.getElementById("form").innerHTML += x;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
Get id of First <form> Element
The following example returns id of the first <form> element using item(index) method.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>
HTML DOM Document forms Property
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="FORM1">
Fruit <input type="text" name="fname" value="Mango">
</form>
<form id="FORM2">
Age <input type="text" name="Age" value="22">
</form>
<form id="FORM3">
Password: <input type="password" name="pass" value="test">
</form>
<br>
<button onclick="fun()">Click me</button>
<p id="Sample">form id: <br></p>
<p id="form"></p>
<script>
function fun() {
let x = document.forms.item(0).id
+"<br>";
document.getElementById("form").innerHTML += x;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
Get HTML Content of Specified id
The following example returns content of <form> element with specified id.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>
HTML DOM Document forms Property
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="FORM1">
Fruit <input type="text" name="fname" value="Mango">
</form>
<form id="FORM2">
Age <input type="text" name="Age" value="22">
</form>
<form id="FORM3">
Password: <input type="password" name="pass" value="test">
</form>
<br>
<button onclick="fun()">Click me</button>
<p id="Sample">HTML contetn with specified id :<br></p>
<p id="form"></p>
<script>
function fun() {
let x = document.forms.namedItem("FORM2").innerHTML;
document.getElementById("form").innerHTML = x;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
Supported Browsers
| Property | ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| forms | Yes 1 | Yes 12 | Yes 1 | Yes 1 | Yes 12.1 |




