How to apply a style to an embedded SVG?

Question

When an SVG is directly included in a document using the <svg> tag, you can apply CSS styles to the SVG via the document's stylesheet. However, I am trying to apply a style to an SVG which is embedded (using the <object> tag).

Is it possible to use anything such as the following code?

object svg {      fill: #fff;  } 

Answer 1

Short answer: no, since styles don't apply across document boundaries.

However, since you have an <object> tag you can insert the stylesheet into the svg document using script.

Something like this, and note that this code assumes that the <object> has loaded fully:

var svgDoc = yourObjectElement.contentDocument; var styleElement = svgDoc.createElementNS("http://www.w3.org/2000/svg", "style"); styleElement.textContent = "svg { fill: #fff }"; // add whatever you need here svgDoc.getElementById("where-to-insert").appendChild(styleElement); 

It's also possible to insert a <link> element to reference an external stylesheet:

var svgDoc = yourObjectElement.contentDocument; var linkElm = svgDoc.createElementNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml", "link"); linkElm.setAttribute("href", "my-style.css"); linkElm.setAttribute("type", "text/css"); linkElm.setAttribute("rel", "stylesheet"); svgDoc.getElementById("where-to-insert").appendChild(linkElm); 

Yet another option is to use the first method, to insert a style element, and then add an @import rule, e.g styleElement.textContent = "@import url(my-style.css)".

Of course you can directly link to the stylesheet from the svg file too, without doing any scripting. Either of the following should work:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml-stylesheet href="my-style.css" type="text/css"?> <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">   ... rest of document here ... </svg> 

or:

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">   <defs>     <link href="my-style.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"            xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"/>   </defs>   ... rest of document here ... </svg> 

Update 2015: you can use jquery-svg plugin for apply js scripts and css styles to an embedded SVG.