CanvasRenderingContext2D: beginPath() method

Baseline
Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

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The CanvasRenderingContext2D.beginPath() method of the Canvas 2D API starts a new path by emptying the list of sub-paths. Call this method when you want to create a new path.

Note: To create a new sub-path, i.e., one matching the current canvas state, you can use CanvasRenderingContext2D.moveTo().

Syntax

js
beginPath()

Parameters

None.

Return value

None (undefined).

Examples

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Creating distinct paths

This example creates two paths, each of which contains a single line.

HTML

html
<canvas id="canvas"></canvas>

JavaScript

The beginPath() method is called before beginning each line, so that they may be drawn with different colors.

js
const canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
const ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");

// First path
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.strokeStyle = "blue";
ctx.moveTo(20, 20);
ctx.lineTo(200, 20);
ctx.stroke();

// Second path
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.strokeStyle = "green";
ctx.moveTo(20, 20);
ctx.lineTo(120, 120);
ctx.stroke();

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML>
# dom-context-2d-beginpath-dev>

Browser compatibility

See also