DataTransfer: types property

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.

The DataTransfer.types read-only property returns the available types that exist in the items.

Value

An array of the data formats. Each format is a string which is generally a MIME type such as text/plain or text/html. If the drag operation included no data, this list will be empty. If any files are included in the drag operation, then one of the types will be the string Files.

Examples

This example shows the use of the types and items properties.

html
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <title>Examples of DataTransfer.{types,items} properties</title>
  <meta content="width=device-width" />
  <style>
    div {
      margin: 0em;
      padding: 2em;
    }
    #target {
      border: 1px solid black;
    }
  </style>
  <script>
    function dragstart_handler(ev) {
      console.log("dragStart: target.id = " + ev.target.id);

      // Add this element's id to the drag payload so the drop handler will
      // know which element to add to its tree
      ev.dataTransfer.setData("text/plain", ev.target.id);
      ev.dataTransfer.effectAllowed = "move";
    }

    function drop_handler(ev) {
      console.log("drop: target.id = " + ev.target.id);
      ev.preventDefault();

      // Get the id of the target and add the moved element to the target's DOM
      const data = ev.dataTransfer.getData("text");
      ev.target.appendChild(document.getElementById(data));

      // Print each format type
      for (let i = 0; i < ev.dataTransfer.types.length; i++) {
        console.log(`… types[${i}] = ${ev.dataTransfer.types[i]}`);
      }

      // Print each item's "kind" and "type"
      for (let i = 0; i < ev.dataTransfer.items.length; i++) {
        console.log(
          `… items[${i}].kind = ${ev.dataTransfer.items[i].kind}; type = ${ev.dataTransfer.items[i].type}`,
        );
      }
    }

    function dragover_handler(ev) {
      console.log("dragOver");
      ev.preventDefault();
      // Set the dropEffect to move
      ev.dataTransfer.dropEffect = "move";
    }
  </script>
  <body>
    <h1>
      Examples of <code>DataTransfer</code>.{<code>types</code>,
      <code>items</code>} properties
    </h1>
    <ul>
      <li id="i1" ondragstart="dragstart_handler(event);" draggable="true">
        Drag Item 1 to the Drop Zone
      </li>
      <li id="i2" ondragstart="dragstart_handler(event);" draggable="true">
        Drag Item 2 to the Drop Zone
      </li>
    </ul>
    <div
      id="target"
      ondrop="drop_handler(event);"
      ondragover="dragover_handler(event);">
      Drop Zone
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-datatransfer-types-dev

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also