4.2.3 The base element

Categories:
Metadata content.
Contexts in which this element can be used:
In a head element containing no other base elements.
Content model:
Empty.
Content attributes:
Global attributes
href
target
DOM interface:
interface HTMLBaseElement : HTMLElement {
           attribute DOMString href;
           attribute DOMString target;
};

The base element allows authors to specify the document base URL for the purposes of resolving relative URLs, and the name of the default browsing context for the purposes of following hyperlinks. The element does not represent any content beyond this information.

There must be no more than one base element per document.

A base element must have either an href attribute, a target attribute, or both.

The href content attribute, if specified, must contain a valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces.

A base element, if it has an href attribute, must come before any other elements in the tree that have attributes defined as taking URLs, except the html element (its manifest attribute isn't affected by base elements).

If there are multiple base elements with href attributes, all but the first are ignored.

The target attribute, if specified, must contain a valid browsing context name or keyword, which specifies which browsing context is to be used as the default when hyperlinks and forms in the Document cause navigation.

A base element, if it has a target attribute, must come before any elements in the tree that represent hyperlinks.

If there are multiple base elements with target attributes, all but the first are ignored.

The href IDL attribute, on getting, must return the result of running the following algorithm:

  1. If the base element has no href content attribute, then return the document base URL and abort these steps.

  2. Let fallback base url be the Document's fallback base URL.

  3. Let url be the value of the href attribute of the base element.

  4. Resolve url relative to fallback base url (thus, the base href attribute isn't affected by xml:base attributes or base elements).

  5. If the previous step was successful, return the resulting absolute URL and abort these steps.

  6. Otherwise, return the empty string.

The href IDL attribute, on setting, must set the href content attribute to the given new value.

The target IDL attribute must reflect the content attribute of the same name.

In this example, a base element is used to set the document base URL:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>This is an example for the &lt;base&gt; element</title>
        <base href="http://www.example.com/news/index.html">
    </head>
    <body>
        <p>Visit the <a href="archives.html">archives</a>.</p>
    </body>
</html>

The link in the above example would be a link to "http://www.example.com/news/archives.html".