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/DOM

document.createElement

In an HTML document, the Document.createElement() method creates the HTML element specified by tagName, or an HTMLUnknownElement if tagName isn't recognized. In a XUL document, it creates the specified XUL element. In other documents, it creates an element with a null namespace URI.

To explicitly specify the namespace URI for the element, use document.createElementNS().

Syntax

var element = document.createElement(tagName[, options]);

Parameters

tagName: 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").
optionsOptional: An optional ElementCreationOptions object containing a single property named is, whose value is the tag name for a custom element previously defined using customElements.define(). 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. See Extending native HTML elements for more information on how to use this parameter.; The new element will be given an is attribute whose value is the custom element's tag name. Custom elements are an experimental feature only available in some browsers.

Return value

The new Element.

Example

This creates a new <div> and inserts it before the element with the ID "div1".

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>||Working with elements||</title>
</head>
<body>
  <div id="div1">The text above has been created dynamically.</div>
</body>
</html>

JavaScript

document.body.onload = addElement;

function addElement () { 
  // create a new div element 
  var newDiv = document.createElement("div"); 
  // and give it some content 
  var 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 
  var currentDiv = document.getElementById("div1"); 
  document.body.insertBefore(newDiv, currentDiv); 
}

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
DOM The definition of 'Document.createElement' in that specification.	Living Standard

Browser compatibility

Feature	Chrome	Edge	Firefox (Gecko)	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari (WebKit)
Basic support	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)^[1][2]	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)
`options` argument	(Yes)^[3]	?	50 (50)^[4][5]	?	?	?

Feature	Android	Android Webview	Edge	Firefox Mobile (Gecko)	IE Phone	Opera Mobile	Safari Mobile	Chrome for Android
Basic support	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)	(Yes)
`options` argument	(Yes)	(Yes)^[3]	?	?	?	?	?	(Yes)^[3]

[1] Starting with Gecko 22.0 (Firefox 22.0 / Thunderbird 22.0 / SeaMonkey 2.19) createElement() no longer uses the HTMLSpanElement interface when the argument is "bgsounds", "multicol", or "image". Instead, HTMLUnknownElement is used for "bgsound" and "multicol" and HTMLElement HTMLElement is used for "image".

[2] The Gecko implementation of createElement doesn't conform to the DOM spec for XUL and XHTML documents: localName and namespaceURI are not set to null on the created element. See bug 280692 for details.

[3] In previous versions of the specification, this argument was just a string whose value was the custom element's tag name. For example it could take document.createElement("button", "custom-button") rather than document.createElement("button", {id: "custom-button"}). For the sake of backwards compatibility, Chrome accepts both forms, though the string form is deprecated.

[4] See [3] above: like Chrome, Firefox accepts a string instead of an object here, but only from version 51 onwards. In version 50, options must be an object.

[5] To experiment with custom elements in Firefox, you must set the dom.webcomponents.enabled and dom.webcomponents.customelements.enabled preferences to true.

Quantum CSS notes

In Gecko, when you create a detached subtree (e.g. a <div> created using createElement() that is not yet inserted into the DOM), the subtree's root element is set as a block-level element. In Firefox's new parallel CSS engine (also known as Quantum CSS or Stylo, planned for release in Firefox 57), this is set as inline, as per spec (bug 1374994).