Adding and Removing Nodes (HTML Elements)
Creating New HTML Elements (Nodes)
To add a new element to the HTML DOM, you must create the element (element node) first, and then append it to an existing element.
Example
<div id="div1"> <p id="p1">This is a paragraph.</p> <p id="p2">This is another paragraph.</p> </div> <script> const para = document.createElement("p");
const node = document.createTextNode("This is new.");
para.appendChild(node);
const element = document.getElementById("div1");
element.appendChild(para);
</script>Example Explained
This code creates a new <p> element:
const para = document.createElement("p");To add text to the <p> element, you must create a text node first. This code creates a text node:
const node = document.createTextNode("This is a new paragraph.");Then you must append the text node to the <p> element:
para.appendChild(node);Finally you must append the new element to an existing element.
This code finds an existing element
const element = document.getElementById("div1");This code appends the new element to the existing element:
element.appendChild(para);Creating new HTML Elements - insertBefore()
The appendChild() method in the previous example, appended the new element as the last child of the parent.
If you don't want that you can use the insertBefore() method:
Example
<div id="div1"> <p id="p1">This is a paragraph.</p> <p id="p2">This is another paragraph.</p> </div> <script> const para = document.createElement("p");
const node = document.createTextNode("This is new.");
para.appendChild(node);
const element = document.getElementById("div1");
const child = document.getElementById("p1");
element.insertBefore(para, child);
</script>Removing Existing HTML Elements
To remove an HTML element, use the remove() method:
Example
<div> <p id="p1">This is a paragraph.</p> <p id="p2">This is another paragraph.</p> </div> <script> const elmnt = document.getElementById("p1");
elmnt.remove();
</script>Example Explained
The HTML document contains a <div> element with two child nodes (two <p> elements):
<div>
<p id="p1">This is a paragraph.</p>
<p id="p2">This is another paragraph.</p>
</div>Find the element you want to remove:
const elmnt = document.getElementById("p1");Then execute the remove() method on that element:
elmnt.remove();The remove() method does not work in older browsers, see the example below on how to use removeChild() instead.
Removing a Child Node
For browsers that does not support the remove() method, you have to find the parent node to remove an element:
Example
<div id="div1"> <p id="p1">This is a paragraph.</p> <p id="p2">This is another paragraph.</p> </div> <script> const parent = document.getElementById("div1");
const child = document.getElementById("p1");
parent.removeChild(child);
</script>Example Explained
This HTML document contains a <div> element with two child nodes (two <p> elements):
<div id="div1">
<p id="p1">This is a paragraph.</p>
<p id="p2">This is another paragraph.</p>
</div>Find the element with id="div1" :
const parent = document.getElementById("div1");Find the <p> element with id="p1" :
const child = document.getElementById("p1");Remove the child from the parent
parent.removeChild(child);Here is a common workaround: Find the child you want to remove, and use its parentNode property to find the parent:
const child = document.getElementById("p1");
child.parentNode.removeChild(child);Replacing HTML Elements
To replace an element to the HTML DOM, use the replaceChild() method:
Example
<div id="div1"> <p id="p1">This is a paragraph.</p> <p id="p2">This is another paragraph.</p> </div> <script> const para = document.createElement("p");
const node = document.createTextNode("This is new.");
para.appendChild(node);
const parent = document.getElementById("div1");
const child = document.getElementById("p1");
parent.replaceChild(para, child);
</script>