HTMLTableElement: createCaption() 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 HTMLTableElement.createCaption() method returns the <caption> element associated with a given <table>. If no <caption> element exists on the table, this method creates it, and then returns it.

Note: If no caption exists, createCaption() inserts a new caption directly into the table. The caption does not need to be added separately as would be the case if Document.createElement() had been used to create the new <caption> element.

Syntax

js
createCaption()

Parameters

None.

Return value

HTMLTableCaptionElement

Examples

This example uses JavaScript to add a caption to a table that initially lacks one.

HTML

html
<table>
  <tr>
    <td>Cell 1.1</td>
    <td>Cell 1.2</td>
    <td>Cell 1.3</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cell 2.1</td>
    <td>Cell 2.2</td>
    <td>Cell 2.3</td>
  </tr>
</table>

JavaScript

js
let table = document.querySelector("table");
let caption = table.createCaption();
caption.textContent = "This caption was created by JavaScript!";

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-table-createcaption-dev

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser