Get the content of an Iframe in Javascript – crossbrowser solution for both IE and Firefox

http://roneiv.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/get-the-content-of-an-iframe-in-javascript-crossbrowser-solution-for-both-ie-and-firefox/

Ok, let’s imagine the use case: I have an iframe somewhere on my page, and when I click a link or a button I need to get the content of it (could be a textarea e.g.), and then do some stuff with it.

It was easy to do this in IE, but for Firefox I struggled more, as I kept getting the “frame has no properties” error message in the console. And when I solved this I couldn’t get to the content.

There is a lot of references out there claiming that you could use document.frames['nameOfMyIframe'] or window.frames['nameOfMyIframe'] to get the frame, and then use the .innerHTML to get the content, but both are wrong.

I came up with the following function that seems to do the job in both Firefox (tested on version 2.0.0.11 and 3.03 ) and in IE (6 and 7):

function getContentFromIframe(iFrameName)

{

var myIFrame = document.getElementById(iFrameName);

var content = myIFrame.


contentWindow


.document.body.innerHTML;

//Do whatever you need with the content

}