The Document.characterSet
read-only property returns the character encoding of the
document that it's currently rendered with. (A character encoding is a set of
characters and how to interpret bytes into those characters.)
A “character set” and a “character encoding” are related, but different. Despite the name of this property, it returns the encoding.
Users can override the developer-specified encoding inside the Content-Type header or inline
like <meta charset="utf-8">, such as with Firefox's View → Text
Encoding menu. This override is provided to fix incorrect developer-specified
encodings that result in garbled
text.
The properties document.charset and document.inputEncoding
are legacy aliases for document.characterSet. Do not use them any more.
Syntax
var string = document.characterSet;Examples
<button onclick="console.log(document.characterSet);">
Log character encoding
</button>
<!-- displays document's character encoding in the dev console, such as "ISO-8859-1" or "UTF-8" -->
Specifications
| Specification | Status | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| DOM The definition of 'characterSet' in that specification. |
Living Standard | Initial definition. |
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser