Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the style property to manipulate the inline style of the HTML elements.
Setting inline styles
To set the inline style of an element, you use the style property of that element:
element.styleCode language: CSS (css)The style property returns the read-only CSSStyleDeclaration object that contains a list of CSS properties. For example, to set the color of an element to red, you use the following code:
element.style.color = 'red';Code language: JavaScript (javascript)If the CSS property contains hyphens (-) for example -webkit-text-stroke you can use the array-like notation ([]) to access the property:
element.style.['-webkit-text-stock'] = 'unset';Code language: JavaScript (javascript)The following table shows the common CSS properties:
| CSS | JavaScript |
|---|---|
| background | background |
| background-attachment | backgroundAttachment |
| background-color | backgroundColor |
| background-image | backgroundImage |
| background-position | backgroundPosition |
| background-repeat | backgroundRepeat |
| border | border |
| border-bottom | borderBottom |
| border-bottom-color | borderBottomColor |
| border-bottom-style | borderBottomStyle |
| border-bottom-width | borderBottomWidth |
| border-color | borderColor |
| border-left | borderLeft |
| border-left-color | borderLeftColor |
| border-left-style | borderLeftStyle |
| border-left-width | borderLeftWidth |
| border-right | borderRight |
| border-right-color | borderRightColor |
| border-right-style | borderRightStyle |
| border-right-width | borderRightWidth |
| border-style | borderStyle |
| border-top | borderTop |
| border-top-color | borderTopColor |
| border-top-style | borderTopStyle |
| border-top-width | borderTopWidth |
| border-width | borderWidth |
| clear | clear |
| clip | clip |
| color | color |
| cursor | cursor |
| display | display |
| filter | filter |
| float | cssFloat |
| font | font |
| font-family | fontFamily |
| font-size | fontSize |
| font-variant | fontVariant |
| font-weight | fontWeight |
| height | height |
| left | left |
| letter-spacing | letterSpacing |
| line-height | lineHeight |
| list-style | listStyle |
| list-style-image | listStyleImage |
| list-style-position | listStylePosition |
| list-style-type | listStyleType |
| margin | margin |
| margin-bottom | marginBottom |
| margin-left | marginLeft |
| margin-right | marginRight |
| margin-top | marginTop |
| overflow | overflow |
| padding | padding |
| padding-bottom | paddingBottom |
| padding-left | paddingLeft |
| padding-right | paddingRight |
| padding-top | paddingTop |
| page-break-after | pageBreakAfter |
| page-break-before | pageBreakBefore |
| position | position |
| stroke-dasharray | strokeDasharray |
| stroke-dashoffset | strokeDashoffset |
| stroke-width | strokeWidth |
| text-align | textAlign |
| text-decoration | textDecoration |
| text-indent | textIndent |
| text-transform | textTransform |
| top | top |
| vertical-align | verticalAlign |
| visibility | visibility |
| width | width |
| z-index | zIndex |
To completely override the existing inline style, you set the cssText property of the style object. For example:
element.style.cssText = 'color:red;background-color:yellow';
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)Or you can use the setAttribute() method:
element.setAttribute('style','color:red;background-color:yellow');Code language: JavaScript (javascript)Once setting the inline style, you can modify one or more CSS properties:
element.style.color = 'blue';Code language: JavaScript (javascript)If you do not want to completely overwrite the existing CSS properties, you can concatenate the new CSS property to the cssText as follows:
element.style.cssText += 'color:red;background-color:yellow';Code language: JavaScript (javascript)In this case, the += operator appends the new style string to the existing one.
The following css() helper function is used to set multiple styles for an element from an object of key-value pairs:
function css(e, styles) {
for (const property in styles)
e.style[property] = styles[property];
}Code language: JavaScript (javascript)You can use this css() function to set multiple styles for an element with the id #content as follows:
let content = document.querySelector('#content');
css(content, { background: 'yellow', border: 'solid 1px red'});Code language: JavaScript (javascript)The following example uses the style object to set the CSS properties of a paragraph with the id content:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>JS Style Demo</title>
</head>
<body>
<p id="content">JavaScript Setting Style Demo!</p>
<script>
let p = document.querySelector('#content');
p.style.color = 'red';
p.style.fontWeight = 'bold';
</script>
</body>
</html>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)How it works:
- First, select the paragraph element whose id is
contentby using thequerySelector()method. - Then, set the color and font-weight properties of the paragraph by setting the
colorandfontWeightproperties of thestyleobject.
Getting inline styles
The style property returns the inline styles of an element. It is not very useful in practice because the style property doesn’t return the rules that come from elsewhere e.g., styles from an external style sheet.
To get all styles applied to an element, you should use the window.getComputedStyle() method.
Summary
- Use the properties of
element.styleobject to set the inline CSS properties for the HTML element.
