DocumentFragment: replaceChildren() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The DocumentFragment.replaceChildren() method replaces the existing children of a DocumentFragment with a specified new set of children. These can be string or Node objects.

Syntax

js
replaceChildren(param1)
replaceChildren(param1, param2)
replaceChildren(param1, param2, /* …, */ paramN)

Parameters

param1, …, paramN

A set of Node objects or strings to replace the DocumentFragment's existing children with. If no replacement objects are specified, then the DocumentFragment is emptied of all child nodes.

Return value

None (undefined).

Exceptions

HierarchyRequestError DOMException

Thrown when the constraints of the node tree are violated.

Examples

Emptying a document fragment

replaceChildren() provides a very convenient mechanism for emptying a document fragment of all its children. You call it on the document fragment without any argument specified:

js
let fragment = new DocumentFragment();
let div = document.createElement("div");
let p = document.createElement("p");
fragment.append(p);
fragment.prepend(div);

fragment.children; // HTMLCollection [<div>, <p>]

fragment.replaceChildren();

fragment.children; // HTMLCollection []

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# ref-for-dom-parentnode-replacechildren①

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also