How to wait for the DOM ready event in plain JavaScript

Oct 17, 2018

Learn how to run plain JavaScript as soon as the page is ready by listening for the DOMContentLoaded event on the document with addEventListener.

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You can do so by adding an event listener to the document object for the DOMContentLoaded event:

document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', (event) => {
  //the event occurred
})

I usually don’t use arrow functions inside for the event callback, because we cannot access this.

In this case we don’t need so, because this is always document. In any other event listener I would just use a regular function:

document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function (event) {
  //the event occurred
})

for example if I’m adding the event listener inside a loop and I don’t really know what this will be when the event is triggered.

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