appendChild (W3C DOM Core method)
| Version | Depr. | Static |
|---|---|---|
| DOM1 | No | No |
| IE5.5+ | FF3+ | SA1.3+ | OP9+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full | Full | Buggy | Buggy |
- Returns
Node- Throws
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR,WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR,NO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERR
Example
node.appendChild(newnode);The example above will append newnode at the end of node's list of children.
So if
node is actually an HTML p element,
like this:
<p>Love always</p>
And
newnode is a Text node with the
value wins, then the operation above would result in
this:
<p>Love always wins</p>
Arguments
- new node (
Node) required The new node to be added to this node. If the new node has any children these are also added recursively, preserving the new node's sub-tree.
Description
Add a new node (and its subtree, if applicable) to the end of the list of children of this node.
If the new child is already present in the DOM tree it is first
removed (effectively moving it). If the new child is a DocumentFragment node then the entire contents of the
document fragment are appended, but the fragment node itself is not
(therefore using a document fragment is a good way of building and
attaching several nodes at once).
Return value
The node that was added
Compatibility
| Internet Explorer | Firefox | Safari | Opera | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.5 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 9.0 | 9.5 |
| Full | Full | Full | Buggy | Buggy | Full | Buggy | Buggy | Buggy | Buggy | Buggy |
The specification
says that this method should throw a DOMException
when attempting to append a node which was created in a different document
(code 4: WRONG_DOCUMENT_ERR).
Therefore if a browser supports this and does not throw an exception, this
is considered a bug, and is what happens in
Opera, Firefox 1.5 and
2 and Safari 3.
In Safari 1.3 and 2 attempting to append a node which was created in a different document causes the browser to crash.
Overall then — don't use appendChild to move
nodes between documents, use importNode instead, because that's what it's
for.
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