How to get the value of the lang attribute with jQuery?

Question

Suppose I have an HTML document that looks like this:

<html lang="en"> ... </html>

My question is: how to get the value of the attribute lang with jQuery?
I've tried $("html").attr("lang") but it did not work... any suggestions?

Cannot reproduce. $("html").attr("lang") works just fine for me when extrapolating from the example you have given. Can you post more details? — molf
– molf, Commented Jul 27, 2009 at 10:21
check if all your scripts are running (with firebug - see if no error); and also your html is valid. — xandy
– xandy, Commented Jul 27, 2009 at 10:24
May be this is a HTML vs. XHTML issue and lang attribute just don't end up in the DOM for one of them. Needs more research. — Maxim Sloyko
– Maxim Sloyko, Commented Jul 27, 2009 at 10:26
I've tried that again with an empty html document (just <html>, jquery include and the js script) and it work. but when I try to execute the same script on a complex page (gmail inbox using GreaseMonkey) it returns nothing ... — PapelPincel
– PapelPincel, Commented Jul 27, 2009 at 10:58
$("html").attr("lang") is working in major browser with html5 in 2015! — Martin K.
– Martin K., Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 9:57

OneOfOne · Accepted Answer · 2009-07-27 10:27:30Z

25

Access the attribute directly, ex :

$('html')[0].lang

answered Jul 27, 2009 at 10:27

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Comments

Josh Crozier · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-13 00:26:47Z

You don't need to use jQuery for this.

The easiest way to retrieve the lang attribute is to access the lang property on the read-only documentElement object:

document.documentElement.lang;

smack0007 · Accepted Answer · 2009-07-27 10:19:46Z

9

Use .attr()

alert($('html').attr('lang'));

answered Jul 27, 2009 at 10:19

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I have vote myself down. I missed the part where he said what he did already.