files/en-us/web/api/shadowroot/index.md
{{APIRef("Shadow DOM")}}
The ShadowRoot interface of the Shadow DOM API is the root node of a DOM subtree that is rendered separately from a document's main DOM tree.
You can retrieve a reference to an element's shadow root using its {{domxref("Element.shadowRoot")}} property, provided it was created using {{domxref("Element.attachShadow()")}} with the mode option set to open.
{{InheritanceDiagram}}
null if one has not been set.ShadowRoot is attached to.ShadowRoot.ShadowRoot, either open or closed.
This defines whether or not the shadow root's internal features are accessible from JavaScript.null if lock is pending, pointer is unlocked, or if the target is in another tree.ShadowRoot.referenceTarget {{Experimental_Inline}} {{non-standard_inline}}
options.serializableShadowRoots parameter is set true.
This is set when the shadow root is created.manual or named.ShadowRoot.innerHTML.The following events are available to ShadowRoot via event bubbling from {{domxref("HTMLSlotElement")}}:
HTMLSlotElement {{domxref("HTMLSlotElement.slotchange_event", "slotchange")}} event
The following snippets are taken from our life-cycle-callbacks example (see it live also), which creates an element that displays a square of a size and color specified in the element's attributes.
Inside the <custom-square> element's class definition we include some life cycle callbacks that make a call to an external function, updateStyle(), which actually applies the size and color to the element. You'll see that we are passing it this (the custom element itself) as a parameter.
class Square extends HTMLElement {
// …
connectedCallback() {
console.log("Custom square element added to page.");
updateStyle(this);
}
attributeChangedCallback(name, oldValue, newValue) {
console.log("Custom square element attributes changed.");
updateStyle(this);
}
// …
}
In the updateStyle() function itself, we get a reference to the shadow DOM using {{domxref("Element.shadowRoot")}}.
From here we use standard DOM traversal techniques to find the {{htmlelement("style")}} element inside the shadow DOM and then update the CSS found inside it:
function updateStyle(elem) {
const shadow = elem.shadowRoot;
const childNodes = shadow.childNodes;
for (const node of childNodes) {
if (node.nodeName === "STYLE") {
node.textContent = `
div {
width: ${elem.getAttribute("l")}px;
height: ${elem.getAttribute("l")}px;
background-color: ${elem.getAttribute("c")};
}
`;
}
}
}
{{Specifications}}
{{Compat}}