value

Summary

Gets the content of a <textarea> element.

Property of dom/HTMLTextAreaElement dom/HTMLTextAreaElement

Syntax

var textAreaContent = textAreaElement.value;
textAreaElement.value = newTextAreaContent;

Return Value

Returns an object of type StringString

The content of the element, whether entered, existing or otherwise visible.

Examples

The following code uses this property to log the content of a <textarea> and its length.

// Declaring the used variables first.
var textAreaList, textArea;

// Getting any <textarea> in the page
textAreaList = document.getElementsByTagName("textarea");

// Verifying there is at least one.
if (textAreaList.length) {

    // Getting the first <textarea> in the page.
    textArea = textAreaList[0];

   // Logging the content of the first <textarea> in the page.
    console.log("The content of the first textarea element is - " +
        textArea.value);

    // Logging the codepoint length of the
    // content of the first <textarea> in the page.
    console.log("The codepoint length of the content of the first textarea element is - " +
        textArea.value.length);
}

Usage

 Use this property to get the content of <textarea>.

Notes

In JavaScript/ECMAScript, the length property of this property can be used to determine the codepoint length of the content.

Related specifications

Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1: W3C Recommendation
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML: W3C Recommendation
W3C HTML5: W3C Candidate Recommendation
WHATWG HTML: Living Standard