- The document.createElement Function in JavaScript
- Recursive createElement()
- More Fundamentals Tutorials
- Document: createElement() method
- Syntax
- Parameters
- Return value
- Examples
- Basic example
- HTML
- JavaScript
- Result
- Web component example
- Specifications
- Browser compatibility
- See also
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The document.createElement Function in JavaScript
The createElement() function in JavaScript is used to programatically add elements to the DOM. It has one required argument, the type of element to create, like ‘div’ or ‘img’ . For example, the button below creates and appends a new element.
Below is the HTML and JavaScript for the above button.
"append-elements"> div> "addElement()">Click to Add/button>
function addElement( ) < const doc = document.createElement('div'); doc.innerHTML = 'Hello World'; const container = document.querySelector('#append-elements'); container.appendChild(doc); >
Recursive createElement()
Once you create an element, you can use methods like appendChild() to create and append more elements.
const parent = document.querySelector('#nested'); // Create one element. const child = document.createElement('div'); child.innerText = 'I am the parent\'s child'; // Create another element const grandchild = document.createElement('h1'); grandchild.innerText = 'I am the grandchild'; // Append 2nd element as a child of the 1st elemtn parent.appendChild(child); child.appendChild(grandchild);
Below is the output of the above JavaScript.
More Fundamentals Tutorials
Document: createElement() method
In an HTML document, the document.createElement() method creates the HTML element specified by tagName, or an HTMLUnknownElement if tagName isn’t recognized.
Syntax
createElement(tagName) createElement(tagName, options)
Parameters
A string that specifies the type of element to be created. The nodeName of the created element is initialized with the value of tagName. Don’t use qualified names (like «html:a») with this method. When called on an HTML document, createElement() converts tagName to lower case before creating the element. In Firefox, Opera, and Chrome, createElement(null) works like createElement(«null») .
An object with the following properties:
The tag name of a custom element previously defined via customElements.define() . See Web component example for more details.
Return value
Note: A new HTMLElement is returned if the document is an HTMLDocument, which is the most common case. Otherwise a new Element is returned.
Examples
Basic example
This creates a new and inserts it before the element with the ID » div1 «.
HTML
doctype html> html lang="en-US"> head> meta charset="UTF-8" /> title>Working with elementstitle> head> body> div id="div1">The text above has been created dynamically.div> body> html>
JavaScript
.body.onload = addElement; function addElement() // create a new div element const newDiv = document.createElement("div"); // and give it some content const newContent = document.createTextNode("Hi there and greetings!"); // add the text node to the newly created div newDiv.appendChild(newContent); // add the newly created element and its content into the DOM const currentDiv = document.getElementById("div1"); document.body.insertBefore(newDiv, currentDiv); >
Result
Web component example
The following example snippet is taken from our expanding-list-web-component example (see it live also). In this case, our custom element extends the HTMLUListElement , which represents the element.
// Create a class for the element class ExpandingList extends HTMLUListElement constructor() // Always call super first in constructor super(); // constructor definition left out for brevity // … > > // Define the new element customElements.define("expanding-list", ExpandingList, extends: "ul" >);
If we wanted to create an instance of this element programmatically, we’d use a call along the following lines:
let expandingList = document.createElement("ul", is: "expanding-list" >);
The new element will be given an is attribute whose value is the custom element’s tag name.
Note: For backwards compatibility with previous versions of the Custom Elements specification, some browsers will allow you to pass a string here instead of an object, where the string’s value is the custom element’s tag name.
Specifications
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
See also
- Node.removeChild()
- Node.replaceChild()
- Node.appendChild()
- Node.insertBefore()
- Node.hasChildNodes()
- document.createElementNS() — to explicitly specify the namespace URI for the element.
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This page was last modified on Jul 7, 2023 by MDN contributors.
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HTML DOM Document createElement()
document.createElement() is a DOM Level 1 (1998) feature.
It is fully supported in all browsers:
Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Safari | Opera | IE |
Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 9-11 |
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