HTML emptied DOM Event: Reference and Examples

When someone interacts with a webpage, the browser sends events to the relevant JavaScript code. The emptied event happens when the media loading system resets and clears available data.

When emptied happens

The media loading system resets and clears available data.

You can listen for it using addEventListener(). That keeps event handling separate from HTML attributes such as onclick and works well with modern code organization.

A small working example

<video id="demo-target" controls preload="metadata" width="320">
    <source src="sample-video.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
<p id="event-status" role="status">Waiting for emptied...</p>
<script>
    const eventTarget = document.getElementById("demo-target");
    const eventStatus = document.getElementById("event-status");

    if (eventTarget) {
        eventTarget.addEventListener("emptied", (eventDetails) => {
            eventStatus.textContent = "emptied event received";
            console.log(eventDetails.type, eventDetails.target);
        });
    }
</script>

Reading the code

The browser listens for emptied on the relevant target. When the event occurs, the callback receives eventDetails, updates the status message and logs the event name and target in Developer Tools.

Remove or replace the source while loading in a test page.

To test this example, put a real supported media file at the shown path. Events tied to buffering or download behavior may not fire in the same order on every connection. An unavailable sample file is not proof that your event listener is broken.

Try it in your browser

Open the page, show the Console panel, and follow this test: Remove or replace the source while loading in a test page. Then change one thing in the example and observe whether the event still fires.

Common Beginner Mistakes

Expecting emptied to fire without its required user action or browser condition.
Remove or replace the source while loading in a test page.
Adding repeated event listeners without considering cleanup or unwanted side effects.

Key Takeaways

emptied reports the media loading system resets and clears available data.
addEventListener("emptied", ...) listens for the event on the appropriate target.
Remove or replace the source while loading in a test page.