Creating an iframe with given HTML dynamically

Javascript Problem Overview

I'm trying to create an iframe from JavaScript and fill it with arbitrary HTML, like so:

var html = '<body>Foo</body>';
var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
iframe.src = 'data:text/html;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURI(html);

I would expect iframe to then contain a valid window and document. However, this isn't the case:

> > console.log(iframe.contentWindow);
> null

Try it for yourself: http://jsfiddle.net/TrevorBurnham/9k9Pe/

What am I overlooking?

Javascript Solutions

Solution 1 - Javascript

Allthough your src = encodeURI should work, I would have gone a different way:

var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
var html = '<body>Foo</body>';
document.body.appendChild(iframe);
iframe.contentWindow.document.open();
iframe.contentWindow.document.write(html);
iframe.contentWindow.document.close();

As this has no x-domain restraints and is completely done via the iframe handle, you may access and manipulate the contents of the frame later on. All you need to make sure of is, that the contents have been rendered, which will (depending on browser type) start during/after the .write command is issued - but not nescessarily done when close() is called.

A 100% compatible way of doing a callback could be this approach:

<html><body onload="parent.myCallbackFunc(this.window)"></body></html>

Iframes has the onload event, however. Here is an approach to access the inner html as DOM (js):

iframe.onload = function() {
   var div=iframe.contentWindow.document.getElementById('mydiv');
};

Solution 2 - Javascript

Setting the src of a newly created iframe in javascript does not trigger the HTML parser until the element is inserted into the document. The HTML is then updated and the HTML parser will be invoked and process the attribute as expected.

http://jsfiddle.net/9k9Pe/2/

var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
var html = '<body>Foo</body>';
iframe.src = 'data:text/html;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURI(html);
document.body.appendChild(iframe);
console.log('iframe.contentWindow =', iframe.contentWindow);

Also this answer your question it's important to note that this approach has compatibility issues with some browsers, please see the answer of @mschr for a cross-browser solution.

Solution 3 - Javascript

Thanks for your great question, this has caught me out a few times. When using dataURI HTML source, I find that I have to define a complete HTML document.

See below a modified example.

var html = '<html><head></head><body>Foo</body></html>';
var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
iframe.src = 'data:text/html;charset=utf-8,' + encodeURI(html);

take note of the html content wrapped with <html> tags and the iframe.src string.

The iframe element needs to be added to the DOM tree to be parsed.

document.body.appendChild(iframe);

You will not be able to inspect the iframe.contentDocument unless you disable-web-security on your browser. You'll get a message

> DOMException: Failed to read the 'contentDocument' property from 'HTMLIFrameElement': Blocked a frame with origin "http://localhost:7357" from accessing a cross-origin frame.

Solution 4 - Javascript

There is an alternative for creating an iframe whose contents are a string of HTML: the srcdoc attribute. This is not supported in older browsers (chief among them: Internet Explorer, and possibly Safari?), but there is a polyfill for this behavior, which you could put in conditional comments for IE, or use something like has.js to conditionally lazy load it.

Solution 5 - Javascript

I know this is an old question but I thought I would provide an example using the srcdoc attribute as this is now widely supported and this is question is viewed often.

Using the srcdoc attribute, you can provide inline HTML to embed. It overrides the src attribute if supported. The browser will fall back to the src attribute if unsupported.

I would also recommend using the sandbox attribute to apply extra restrictions to the content in the frame. This is especially important if the HTML is not your own.

const iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
const html = '<body>Foo</body>';
iframe.srcdoc = html;
iframe.sandbox = '';
document.body.appendChild(iframe);

If you need to support older browsers, you can check for srcdoc support and fallback to one of the other methods from other answers.

function setIframeHTML(iframe, html) {
  if (typeof iframe.srcdoc !== 'undefined') {
    iframe.srcdoc = html;
  } else {
    iframe.sandbox = 'allow-same-origin';
    iframe.contentWindow.document.open();
    iframe.contentWindow.document.write(html);
    iframe.contentWindow.document.close();
  }
}

var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
iframe.sandbox = '';
var html = '<body>Foo</body>';

document.body.appendChild(iframe);
setIframeHTML(iframe, html);

Solution 6 - Javascript

The URL approach will only work for small HTML fragements. The more solid approach is to generate an object URL from a blob and use it as a source of the dynamic iframe.

const html = '<html>...</html>';
const iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
const blob = new Blob([html], {type: 'text/html'});
iframe.src = window.URL.createObjectURL(blob);
document.body.appendChild(iframe);

Solution 7 - Javascript

Do this

...
var el = document.getElementById('targetFrame');

var frame_win = getIframeWindow(el);

console.log(frame_win);
...

getIframeWindow is defined here

function getIframeWindow(iframe_object) {
  var doc;

  if (iframe_object.contentWindow) {
    return iframe_object.contentWindow;
  }

  if (iframe_object.window) {
    return iframe_object.window;
  } 

  if (!doc && iframe_object.contentDocument) {
    doc = iframe_object.contentDocument;
  } 

  if (!doc && iframe_object.document) {
    doc = iframe_object.document;
  }

  if (doc && doc.defaultView) {
   return doc.defaultView;
  }

  if (doc && doc.parentWindow) {
    return doc.parentWindow;
  }

  return undefined;
}

Solution 8 - Javascript

(function(){

var frame = document.createElement('iframe');
frame.src = 'https://1zr2h9xgfxqt.statuspage.io/embed/frame';
frame.style.position = 'fixed';
frame.style.border = 'none';
frame.style.boxShadow = '0 20px 32px -8px rgba(9,20,66,0.25)';
frame.style.zIndex = '9999';
frame.style.transition = 'left 1s ease, bottom 1s ease, right 1s ease';

var mobile;
if (mobile = screen.width < 450) {
  frame.src += '?mobile=true';
  frame.style.height = '20vh';
  frame.style.width = '100vw';
  frame.style.left = '-9999px';
  frame.style.bottom = '-9999px';
  frame.style.transition = 'bottom 1s ease';
} else {
  frame.style.height = '115px';
  frame.style.width = '320px';
  frame.style.left = 'auto';
  frame.style.right = '-9999px';
  frame.style.bottom = '60px';
}

document.body.appendChild(frame);

var actions = {
  showFrame: function() {
    if (mobile) {
      frame.style.left = '0';
      frame.style.bottom = '0';
    }
    else {
      frame.style.left = 'auto';
      frame.style.right = '60px'
    }
  },
  dismissFrame: function(){
    frame.style.left = '-9999px';
  }
}

window.addEventListener('message', function(event){
  if (event.data.action && actions.hasOwnProperty(event.data.action)) {
    actions[event.data.action](event.data);
  }
}, false);

window.statusEmbedTest = actions.showFrame;

})();

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Trevor Burnham	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Javascript	mschr	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Javascript	GillesC	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Javascript	kylewelsby	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Javascript	zedd45	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Javascript	frobinsonj	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Javascript	damoeb	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Javascript	Dominique Fortin	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Javascript	Abas Fidhin	View Answer on Stackoverflow