<use>

The <use> element takes nodes from within the SVG document, and duplicates them somewhere else. The effect is the same as if the nodes were deeply cloned into a non-exposed DOM, and then pasted where the use element is, much like cloned template elements in HTML5. Since the cloned nodes are not exposed, care must be taken when using CSS to style a use element and its hidden descendants. CSS attributes are not guaranteed to be inherited by the hidden, cloned DOM unless you explicitly request it using CSS inheritance.

For security reasons, some browsers could apply a same-origin policy on use elements and could refuse to load a cross-origin URI within the href attribute.

Usage context

Attributes

Global attributes

• Conditional processing attributes »
• Core attributes »
• Graphical event attributes »
• Presentation attributes »
• Xlink attributes »
• class
• style
• externalResourcesRequired
• transform

Specific attributes

• x
• y
• width
• height
• href

DOM Interface

This element implements the SVGUseElement interface.

Example

<svg width="80" height="80" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <style>
    .classA {
      fill: red;
    }
  </style> 
  <defs>
    <g id="Port">
      <circle style="fill: inherit;" r="10"/>
    </g>
  </defs>
 
  <text y="15">black</text>
  <use x="50" y="10" href="#Port" />
  <text y="35">red</text>
  <use x="50" y="30" href="#Port" class="classA"/>
  <text y="55">blue</text>
  <use x="50" y="50" href="#Port" style="fill: blue;"/>
</svg>

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Notes

• For years, Firefox has suffered from a bug whereby it doesn't completely follow the <svg:use> cascading rules (see bug 265894). A fix is documented by Amelia Bellamy-Royds on StackOverflow. The good news is that this is finally fixed as of Firefox 56.