JavaScript document.createElement() By Practical Examples

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the JavaScript document.createElement() to create a new HTML element and attach it to the DOM tree.

To create an HTML element, you use the document.createElement() method:

let element = document.createElement(htmlTag);

The document.createElement() accepts an HTML tag name and returns a new Node with the Element type.

1) Creating a new div example #

Suppose that you have the following HTML document:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>JS CreateElement Demo</title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

The following example uses the document.createElement() to create a new <div> element:

let div = document.createElement('div');

And add an HTML snippet to the div:

div.innerHTML = '<p>CreateElement example</p>';

To attach the div to the document, you use the appendChild() method:

document.body.appendChild(div);

Put it all together:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>JavaScript CreateElement() Demo</title>
</head>
<body>
    <script>
        let div = document.createElement('div');
        div.id = 'content';
        div.innerHTML = '<p>CreateElement example</p>';
        document.body.appendChild(div);
    </script>
</body>
</html>

Adding an id to the div #

If you want to add an id to a div, you set the id attribute of the element to a value, like this:

let div = document.createElement('div');
div.id = 'content';
div.innerHTML = '<p>CreateElement example</p>';

document.body.appendChild(div);

Adding a class to the div #

The following example sets the CSS class of a new div note:

let div = document.createElement('div');
div.id = 'content';
div.className = 'note';
div.innerHTML = '<p>CreateElement example</p>';

document.body.appendChild(div);

Adding text to a div #

To add a piece of text to a <div>, you can use the innerHTML property as the above example, or create a new Text node and append it to the div:

// create a new div and set its attributes
let div = document.createElement('div');
div.id = 'content';
div.className = 'note';

// create a new text node and add it to the div
let text = document.createTextNode('CreateElement example');
div.appendChild(text);

// add div to the document
document.body.appendChild(div);

Adding an element to a div #

To add an element to a div, you create an element and append it to the div using the appendChild() method:

let div = document.createElement('div');
div.id = 'content';
div.className = 'note';

// create a new heading and add it to the div
let h2 = document.createElement('h2');
h2.textContent = 'Add h2 element to the div';
div.appendChild(h2);

// add div to the document
document.body.appendChild(div);

2) Creating new list items (li) example #

Let’s say you have a list of items:

<ul id="menu">
    <li>Home</li>
</ul>

The following code adds two li elements to the ul:

let li = document.createElement('li');
li.textContent = 'Products';
menu.appendChild(li);

li = document.createElement('li');
li.textContent = 'About Us';

// select the ul menu element
const menu = document.querySelector('#menu');
menu.appendChild(li);

Output:

<ul id="menu">
    <li>Home</li>
    <li>Products</li>
    <li>About Us</li>
</ul>

3) Creating a script element example #

Sometimes, you may want to load a JavaScript file dynamically. To do this, you can use the document.createElement() to create the script element and add it to the document.

The following example illustrates how to create a new script element and loads the /lib.js file to the document:

let script = document.createElement('script');
script.src = '/lib.js';
document.body.appendChild(script);

You can first create a new helper function that loads a JavaScript file from a URL:

function loadJS(url) {
    let script = document.createElement('script');
    script.src = url;
    document.body.appendChild(script);
}

And then use the helper function to load the /lib.js file:

loadJS('/lib.js');

To load a JavaScript file asynchronously, you set the async attribute of the script element to true:

function loadJSAsync(url) {
    let script = document.createElement('script');
    script.src = url;
    script.async = true;
    document.body.appendChild(script);
}

Summary #

The document.createElement() creates a new HTML element.
The element.appendChild() appends an HTML element to an existing element.

Quiz #

Quiz

Understanding createElement() Method

5 questions

Test your understanding of the createElement() method and its usage in JavaScript

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