EventSource: message event

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since January 2020.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The message event of the EventSource interface is fired when data is received through an event source.

This event is not cancelable and does not bubble.

Syntax

Use the event name in methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

js
addEventListener("message", (event) => { })

onmessage = (event) => { }

Event type

A MessageEvent. Inherits from Event.

Event MessageEvent

Examples

In this basic example, an EventSource is created to receive events from the server; a page with the name sse.php is responsible for generating the events.

js
const evtSource = new EventSource("sse.php");
const eventList = document.querySelector("ul");

evtSource.addEventListener("message", (e) => {
  const newElement = document.createElement("li");

  newElement.textContent = `message: ${e.data}`;
  eventList.appendChild(newElement);
});

onmessage equivalent

js
evtSource.onmessage = (e) => {
  const newElement = document.createElement("li");

  newElement.textContent = `message: ${e.data}`;
  eventList.appendChild(newElement);
};

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# event-message
HTML
# handler-eventsource-onmessage

Browser compatibility

See also