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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.

Note: In a XUL document, it creates the specified XUL element. In other documents, it creates an element with a null namespace URI.

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(). See Web component example for more details.

Return value

The new Element。

Examples

Basic 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); 
}

Web component example

The following example snippet is taken from our expanding-list-web-component example (see it live also). In this case, our custom element extends the HTMLUListElement, which represents the <ul> element.

// Create a class for the element
class ExpandingList extends HTMLUListElement {
  constructor() {
    // Always call super first in constructor
    super();

    // constructor definition left out for brevity
    ...
  }
}

// Define the new element
customElements.define('expanding-list', ExpandingList, { extends: "ul" });

If we wanted to create an instance of this element programmatically, we'd use a call along the following lines:

let expandingList = document.createElement('ul', { is : 'expanding-list' })

The new element will be given an is attribute whose value is the custom element's tag name.

Note: 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.

Specifications

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

Browser compatibilityUpdate compatibility data on GitHub

	Desktop
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari
Basic support	Yes	Yes	Yes Yes Doesn't conform to the DOM spec for XUL and XHTML documents: `localName` and `namespaceURI` are not set to null on the created element.	Yes	Yes	Yes
`options` parameter	Yes Yes For backwards compatibility, the `options` argument can be an object or a string with the custom element tag name, although the string version is deprecated.	?	50 50 Firefox accepts a string instead of an object here, but only from version 51 onwards. In version 50, options must be an object.	?	Yes Yes For backwards compatibility, the `options` argument can be an object or a string with the custom element tag name, although the string version is deprecated.	?

	Mobile
	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Edge Mobile	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	iOS Safari	Samsung Internet
Basic support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?
`options` parameter	Yes Yes For backwards compatibility, the `options` argument can be an object or a string with the custom element tag name, although the string version is deprecated.	No No For backwards compatibility, the `options` argument can be an object or a string with the custom element tag name, although the string version is deprecated.	?	50 50 Firefox accepts a string instead of an object here, but only from version 51 onwards. In version 50, options must be an object.	Yes Yes For backwards compatibility, the `options` argument can be an object or a string with the custom element tag name, although the string version is deprecated.	?	?