How do you add CSS with Javascript?

How do you add CSS rules (eg strong { color: red }) by use of Javascript?

15 Answers

The simple-and-direct approach is to create and add a new style node to the document.

// Your CSS as text var styles = ` .qwebirc-qui .ircwindow div { font-family: Georgia,Cambria,"Times New Roman",Times,serif; margin: 26px auto 0 auto; max-width: 650px; } .qwebirc-qui .lines { font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.58; letter-spacing: -.004em; } .qwebirc-qui .nicklist a { margin: 6px; } ` var styleSheet = document.createElement("style") styleSheet.innerText = styles document.head.appendChild(styleSheet) 

You can also do this using DOM Level 2 CSS interfaces (MDN):

var sheet = window.document.styleSheets[0]; sheet.insertRule('strong { color: red; }', sheet.cssRules.length); 

...on all but (naturally) IE8 and prior, which uses its own marginally-different wording:

sheet.addRule('strong', 'color: red;', -1); 

There is a theoretical advantage in this compared to the createElement-set-innerHTML method, in that you don't have to worry about putting special HTML characters in the innerHTML, but in practice style elements are CDATA in legacy HTML, and ‘<’ and ‘&’ are rarely used in stylesheets anyway.

You do need a stylesheet in place before you can started appending to it like this. That can be any existing active stylesheet: external, embedded or empty, it doesn't matter. If there isn't one, the only standard way to create it at the moment is with createElement.

The solution by Ben Blank wouldn't work in IE8 for me.

However this did work in IE8

function addCss(cssCode) { var styleElement = document.createElement("style"); styleElement.type = "text/css"; if (styleElement.styleSheet) { styleElement.styleSheet.cssText = cssCode; } else { styleElement.appendChild(document.createTextNode(cssCode)); } document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(styleElement); } 

Here's a slightly updated version of Chris Herring's solution, taking into account that you can use innerHTML as well instead of a creating a new text node:

function insertCss( code ) { var style = document.createElement('style'); style.type = 'text/css'; if (style.styleSheet) { // IE style.styleSheet.cssText = code; } else { // Other browsers style.innerHTML = code; } document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild( style ); } 

Shortest One Liner

// One liner function: const addCSS = css => document.head.appendChild(document.createElement("style")).innerHTML=css; // Usage: addCSS("body{ background:red; }")

You can add classes or style attributes on an element by element basis.

For example:

<a name="myelement" onclick="this.style.color='#FF0';">text</a> 

Where you could do this.style.background, this.style.font-size, etc. You can also apply a style using this same method ala

this.className='classname'; 

If you want to do this in a javascript function, you can use getElementByID rather than 'this'.

This easy example of add <style> in head of html

var sheet = document.createElement('style'); sheet.innerHTML = "table th{padding-bottom: 0 !important;padding-top: 0 !important;}\n" + "table ul { margin-top: 0 !important; margin-bottom: 0 !important;}\n" + "table td{padding-bottom: 0 !important;padding-top: 0 !important;}\n" + ".messages.error{display:none !important;}\n" + ".messages.status{display:none !important;} "; document.body.appendChild(sheet); // append in body document.head.appendChild(sheet); // append in head 

Source Dynamic style - manipulating CSS with JavaScript

This is my solution to add a css rule at the end of the last style sheet list:

var css = new function() { function addStyleSheet() { let head = document.head; let style = document.createElement("style"); head.appendChild(style); } this.insert = function(rule) { if(document.styleSheets.length == 0) { addStyleSheet(); } let sheet = document.styleSheets[document.styleSheets.length - 1]; let rules = sheet.rules; sheet.insertRule(rule, rules.length); } } css.insert("body { background-color: red }"); 

YUI just recently added a utility specifically for this. See stylesheet.js here.

if you know at least one <style> tag exist in page , use this function :

CSS=function(i){document.getElementsByTagName('style')[0].innerHTML+=i}; 

usage :

CSS("div{background:#00F}"); 

Another option is to use JQuery to store the element's in-line style property, append to it, and to then update the element's style property with the new values. As follows:

function appendCSSToElement(element, CssProperties) { var existingCSS = $(element).attr("style"); if(existingCSS == undefined) existingCSS = ""; $.each(CssProperties, function(key,value) { existingCSS += " " + key + ": " + value + ";"; }); $(element).attr("style", existingCSS); return $(element); } 

And then execute it with the new CSS attributes as an object.

appendCSSToElement("#ElementID", { "color": "white", "background-color": "green", "font-weight": "bold" }); 

This may not necessarily be the most efficient method (I'm open to suggestions on how to improve this. :) ), but it definitely works.

Here's a sample template to help you get started

Requires 0 libraries and uses only javascript to inject both HTML and CSS.

The function was borrowed from the user @Husky above

Useful if you want to run a tampermonkey script and wanted to add a toggle overlay on a website (e.g. a note app for instance)

// INJECTING THE HTML document.querySelector('body').innerHTML += '<div>Hello World</div>'; // CSS INJECTION FUNCTION // function insertCss( code ) { var style = document.createElement('style'); style.type = 'text/css'; if (style.styleSheet) { // IE style.styleSheet.cssText = code; } else { // Other browsers style.innerHTML = code; } document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild( style ); } // INJECT THE CSS INTO FUNCTION // Write the css as you normally would... but treat it as strings and concatenate for multilines insertCss( "#injection {color :red; font-size: 30px;}" + "body {background-color: lightblue;}" )

Here's my general-purpose function which parametrizes the CSS selector and rules, and optionally takes in a css filename (case-sensitive) if you wish to add to a particular sheet instead (otherwise, if you don't provide a CSS filename, it will create a new style element and append it to the existing head. It will make at most one new style element and re-use it on future function calls). Works with FF, Chrome, and IE9+ (maybe earlier too, untested).

function addCssRules(selector, rules, /*Optional*/ sheetName) { // We want the last sheet so that rules are not overridden. var styleSheet = document.styleSheets[document.styleSheets.length - 1]; if (sheetName) { for (var i in document.styleSheets) { if (document.styleSheets[i].href && document.styleSheets[i].href.indexOf(sheetName) > -1) { styleSheet = document.styleSheets[i]; break; } } } if (typeof styleSheet === 'undefined' || styleSheet === null) { var styleElement = document.createElement("style"); styleElement.type = "text/css"; document.head.appendChild(styleElement); styleSheet = styleElement.sheet; } if (styleSheet) { if (styleSheet.insertRule) styleSheet.insertRule(selector + ' {' + rules + '}', styleSheet.cssRules.length); else if (styleSheet.addRule) styleSheet.addRule(selector, rules); } } 

I always forget how to add a class to an HTML element and this SO comes up early in Google, but no one has added the modern way of doing this so here goes.

To add a CSS style you can select the element and call .classList.add(<className>)

for example: document.querySelector("#main").classList.add("bg-primary");

You may also need to remove other class(es) which clash with the one you add. To do so: document.querySelector("#main").classList.remove("bg-secondary");

That's it. Run the sample and you'll see the setInterval() method add & remove the styles every 3 seconds.

let useSecondary = false; setInterval(changeBgColor, 3000); function changeBgColor(){ if (useSecondary){ document.querySelector("#main").classList.remove("bg-primary"); document.querySelector("#main").classList.add("bg-secondary"); } else{ document.querySelector("#main").classList.remove("bg-secondary"); document.querySelector("#main").classList.add("bg-primary"); } useSecondary = !useSecondary; }

* { transition: all 0.5s ease-in-out; } .bg-primary { background-color: green; } .bg-secondary{ background-color: yellow; }

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"> <title>JS Bin</title> </head> <body> <div > <div > Example text has background color changed every 3 seconds by adding / removing CSS styles. </div> </div> </body> </html>

use .css in Jquery like $('strong').css('background','red');

$('strong').css('background','red');

<script src=""></script> <strong> Example </strong>