Node.cloneNode

The Node.cloneNode() method returns a duplicate of the node on which this method was called.

Syntax

var dupNode = node.cloneNode([deep]);

node

The node to be cloned.

dupNode

The new node that will be a clone of node

deep Optional

true if the children of the node should also be cloned, or false to clone only the specified node.

Example

var p = document.getElementById("para1");
var p_prime = p.cloneNode(true);

Notes

Cloning a node copies all of its attributes and their values, including intrinsic (in–line) listeners. It does not copy event listeners added using addEventListener() or those assigned to element properties (e.g. node.onclick = fn). Moreover, for a <canvas> element, the painted image is not copied.

The duplicate node returned by cloneNode() is not part of the document until it is added to another node that is part of the document using Node.appendChild() or a similar method. It also has no parent until it is appended to another node.

If deep is set to false, child nodes are not cloned. Any text that the node contains is not cloned either, as it is contained in one or more child Text nodes.

If deep evaluates to true, the whole subtree (including text that may be in child Text nodes) is copied too. For empty nodes (e.g. <img> and <input> elements) it doesn't matter whether deep is set to true or false.

If the original node has an ID and the clone is to be placed in the same document, the ID of the clone should be modified to be unique. Name attributes may need to be modified also, depending on whether duplicate names are expected.

To clone a node for appending to a different document, use Document.importNode() instead.

Specifications

Browser compatibilityUpdate compatibility data on GitHub