Element: className property

{{APIRef("DOM")}} 

The className property of the {{domxref("Element")}}  interface gets and sets the value of the class attribute of the specified element.

Value

A string variable representing the class or space-separated classes of the current element.

Examples

const el = document.getElementById("item");
el.className = el.className === "active" ? "inactive" : "active";

Notes

The name className is used for this property instead of class because of conflicts with the “class” keyword in many languages which are used to manipulate the DOM.

className can also be an instance of {{domxref("SVGAnimatedString")}}  if the element is an {{domxref("SVGElement")}} . It is easier to get/set the class attribute of an element using {{domxref("Element.getAttribute")}}  and {{domxref("Element.setAttribute")}}  if you are dealing with SVG elements. However, take into account that {{domxref("Element.getAttribute")}}  returns null instead of "" if the element has an empty class attribute.

elm.setAttribute("class", "my-class");
const myClass = elm.getAttribute("class");

[!NOTE] class is the name of an HTML Attribute, while className is the name of a DOM Property.

Specifications

{{Specifications}} 

Browser compatibility

{{Compat}} 

See also

• {{domxref("element.classList")}}