Tech Stuff - DOM removeChild
W3C Core Reference. Part of the Node Interface
removeChild Method
Removes the specified thing (an element/node/object) from the referenced node.
Syntax
oldthing = node.removeChild(thing)
Related Stuff
appendChild method
Parameters
| Name |
Description |
Notes |
| node |
the node to be removed
|
|
Examples
// get a reference to an existing object
obj = document.getElementById("one");
// empty this object of its children
nodelist = obj.childNodes;
// now loop and remove them all
c = nodelist.length; // needed because changes dynamically
for(i = 0; i < c; i++)
{
this_node = nodelist[0]; // reference changes dynamically
removed_node = obj.removeChild(this_node);
}
// alternate method
while(obj.hasChildNodes() == true)
{
obj.removeChild(obj.childNodes[0]);
}
The code fragment above shows two versions of a loop which empties a node of all its child nodes.
Notes:
The number of nodes changes dynamically so in the first fragment we could not have placed the nodelist.length in the 'for' loop because, since it is evaluated each time, the loop would terminate early.
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