How do you get the rendered height of an element?

Question

How do you get the rendered height of an element?

Let's say you have a <div> element with some content inside. This content inside is going to stretch the height of the <div>. How do you get the "rendered" height when you haven't explicitly set the height. Obviously, I tried:

var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').style.height;

Is there a trick for doing this? I am using jQuery if that helps.

Answer 1

Definitely use

$('#someDiv').height()   // to read it

or

$('#someDiv').height(newHeight)  // to set it

I'm posting this as an additional answer because theres a couple important things I just learnt.

I almost fell into the trap just now of using offsetHeight. This is what happened :

• I used the good old trick of using a debugger to 'watch' what properties my element has
• I saw which one has a value around the value I was expecting
• It was offsetHeight - so I used that.
• Then i realized it didnt work with a hidden DIV
• I tried hiding after calculating maxHeight but that looked clumsy - got in a mess.
• I did a search - discovered jQuery.height() - and used it
• found out height() works even on hidden elements
• just for fun I checked the jQuery implementation of height/width

Here's just a portion of it :

Math.max(
Math.max(document.body["scroll" + name], document.documentElement["scroll" + name]),
Math.max(document.body["offset" + name], document.documentElement["offset" + name])
) 

Yup it looks at BOTH scroll and offset. If that fails it looks even further, taking into account browser and css compatibility issues. In other words STUFF I DONT CARE ABOUT - or want to.

But I dont have to. Thanks jQuery!

Moral of the story : if jQuery has a method for something its probably for a good reason, likely related to compatibilty.

If you haven't read through the jQuery list of methods recently I suggest you take a look.

Answer 2

Hm we can get the Element geometry...

var geometry;
geometry={};
var element=document.getElementById(#ibims);
var rect = element.getBoundingClientRect();
this.geometry.top=rect.top;
this.geometry.right=rect.right;
this.geometry.bottom=rect.bottom;
this.geometry.left=rect.left;
this.geometry.height=this.geometry.bottom-this.geometry.top;
this.geometry.width=this.geometry.right-this.geometry.left;
console.log(this.geometry);

How about this plain JS ?

Answer 3

offsetHeight, usually.

If you need to calculate something but not show it, set the element to visibility:hidden and position:absolute, add it to the DOM tree, get the offsetHeight, and remove it. (That's what the prototype library does behind the scenes last time I checked).

Answer 4

If you are using jQuery already, your best bet is .outerHeight() or .height(), as has been stated.

Without jQuery, you can check the box-sizing in use and add up various paddings + borders + clientHeight, or you can use getComputedStyle:

var h = getComputedStyle(document.getElementById('someDiv')).height;

h will now be a string like a "53.825px".

And I can't find the reference, but I think I heard getComputedStyle() can be expensive, so it's probably not something you want to call on each window.onscroll event (but then, neither is jQuery's height()).

Answer 5

You can use .outerHeight() for this purpose.

It will give you full rendered height of the element. Also, you don't need to set any css-height of the element. For precaution you can keep its height auto so it can be rendered as per content's height.

//if you need height of div excluding margin/padding/border
$('#someDiv').height();

//if you need height of div with padding but without border + margin
$('#someDiv').innerHeight();

// if you need height of div including padding and border
$('#someDiv').outerHeight();

//and at last for including border + margin + padding, can use
$('#someDiv').outerHeight(true);

For a clear view of these function you can go for jQuery's site or a detailed post here.

it will clear the difference between .height() / innerHeight() / outerHeight()

Answer 6

With MooTools:

$('someDiv').getSize().y