Range

Baseline Widely available *

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨July 2015⁩.

* Some parts of this feature may have varying levels of support.

The Range interface represents a fragment of a document that can contain nodes and parts of text nodes.

A range can be created by using the Document.createRange() method. Range objects can also be retrieved by using the getRangeAt() method of the Selection object or the caretRangeFromPoint() method of the Document object.

There also is the Range() constructor available.

Instance properties

The properties below are inherited from its parent interface, AbstractRange.

Range.collapsed Read only: Returns a boolean value indicating whether the range's start and end points are at the same position.
Range.commonAncestorContainer Read only: Returns the deepest Node that contains the startContainer and endContainer nodes.
Range.endContainer Read only: Returns the Node within which the Range ends.
Range.endOffset Read only: Returns a number representing where in the endContainer the Range ends.
Range.startContainer Read only: Returns the Node within which the Range starts.
Range.startOffset Read only: Returns a number representing where in the startContainer the Range starts.

Constructor

Range(): Returns a Range object with the global Document as its start and end.

Instance methods

There are no inherited methods.

Range.collapse(): Collapses the Range to one of its boundary points.
Range.compareBoundaryPoints(): Compares the boundary points of the Range with another Range.
Range.compareNode() Deprecated Non-standard: Returns a constant representing whether the Node is before, after, inside, or surrounding the range.
Range.comparePoint(): Returns -1, 0, or 1 indicating whether the point occurs before, inside, or after the Range.
Range.cloneContents(): Returns a DocumentFragment copying the nodes of a Range.
Range.cloneRange(): Returns a Range object with boundary points identical to the cloned Range.
Range.createContextualFragment(): Returns a DocumentFragment created from a given string of code.
Range.deleteContents(): Removes the contents of a Range from the Document.
Range.detach(): Does nothing. Kept for compatibility.
Range.extractContents(): Moves contents of a Range from the document tree into a DocumentFragment.
Range.getBoundingClientRect(): Returns a DOMRect object which bounds the entire contents of the Range; this would be the union of all the rectangles returned by range.getClientRects().
Range.getClientRects(): Returns a list of DOMRect objects that aggregates the results of Element.getClientRects() for all the elements in the Range.
Range.isPointInRange(): Returns a boolean indicating whether the given point is in the Range.
Range.insertNode(): Insert a Node at the start of a Range.
Range.intersectsNode(): Returns a boolean indicating whether the given node intersects the Range.
Range.selectNode(): Sets the Range to contain the Node and its contents.
Range.selectNodeContents(): Sets the Range to contain the contents of a Node.
Range.setEnd(): Sets the end position of a Range.
Range.setStart(): Sets the start position of a Range.
Range.setEndAfter(): Sets the end position of a Range relative to another Node.
Range.setEndBefore(): Sets the end position of a Range relative to another Node.
Range.setStartAfter(): Sets the start position of a Range relative to another Node.
Range.setStartBefore(): Sets the start position of a Range relative to another Node.
Range.surroundContents(): Moves content of a Range into a new Node.
Range.toString(): Returns the text of the Range.

Specifications

Specification
DOM # interface-range
DOM Parsing and Serialization # extensions-to-the-range-interface
CSSOM View Module # extensions-to-the-range-interface

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on ⁨Jan 12, 2026⁩ by MDN contributors.

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