what is the corrent way to get a reference to the body?

[Jake Barnes]

I've been doing this to get a reference to the body node of a document,
but I'm sure there must be something simpler than this:

var arrayOfBodyElements = document.getElementsByTagName("body");
var referenceToBodyNode = arrayOfBodyElements[0];


I tried:

var referenceToBodyNode = document.body;

and:

var referenceToBodyNode = window.body;

both of which got me "body undefined".

So what is the right way to get a reference to the body?

 

[VK]

I tried:
var referenceToBodyNode = document.body;
and:
var referenceToBodyNode = window.body;
both of which got me "body undefined".
So what is the right way to get a reference to the body?

The right way is the first one:
var bodyRef = document.body.

The problem is that this object doesn't exist until onload event is
fired for the window: this is why you were getting undefined.

So in order to get a reference to document.body you have to use
window.onload handler and finish collecting DOM references from there.