Best way to add DOM elements with jQuery

user_215020 0
Viewed 39372

So I've seen three ways to add html/DOM elements to a page. I'm curious what the pros and cons are for each of them.

1 - Traditional JavaScript

I believe the straight JS way to do it is by constructing each element, setting attributes, and then appending them. Example:

var myRow = document.createElement("tr");
myRow.class = "myClass";

var firstTD = document.createElement("td");
firstTD.innerHTML = "first";
myRow.appendChild(firstTD);

var secondTD = document.createElement("td");
secondTD.innerHTML = "second";
myRow.appendChild(secondTD);

document.getElementById("myContainer").appendChild(myRow);

2 - Appending a string of html via jQuery

I've noticed that most jQuery examples I see usually just append a string of html.
Example:

$("#myContainer").append('<tr class="myClass"><td>first</td><td>second</td></tr>');

3 - jQuery's .clone()

I've also seen a lot of uses and references to .clone() in jQuery.
Example:

$("#myContainer").append($(".myClass").clone());

I'd love to hear what others have to say about this.

(Also, this seems like a good candidate for a 'community wiki', but I'm not too familiar with them. Will someone comment and let me know if it should be? Thanks)

dom jquery javascript
8 Answers

If you are using jQuery 1.4 the best way is the following:

$("<a/>", {
    id: 'example-link',
    href: 'http://www.example.com/',
    text: 'Example Page'
}).appendTo("body");
user_1613570

If you already have a template element that you want to copy then by all means use clone().

But if you want to create an element from scratch then there's basically two methods which I think you alluded to:

  1. Create DOM elements as objects (using createElement for example).
  2. Create DOM elements as HTML (using innerHTML or jQuery's html() for example).

First if either of the methods is more intuitive or easier to write for you, I'd recommend just doing that.

Otherwise benefits of using the latter is that it is cleaner if the element has many children. For example, try to make a table row with 6 columns, each with a different class using the first method. Your code will be much longer than if you used the second method.

As far as performance goes this is a good guide http://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/innerhtml/ but the short answer is for most cases the differences are quite negligible. A good guide for performance in general as well is: http://www.artzstudio.com/2009/04/jquery-performance-rules/. The 6th tip has to do with DOM manipulation.

user_2357710

You can try this:

 $("<div/>", {

  // PROPERTIES HERE

  text: "Click me",

  id: "example",

  "class": "myDiv",      // ('class' is still better in quotes)

  css: {           
     color: "red",
     fontSize: "3em",
     cursor: "pointer"
  },

  on: {
    mouseenter: function() {
      console.log("PLEASE... "+ $(this).text());
    },
    click: function() {
      console.log("Hy! My ID is: "+ this.id);
    }
  },

  append: "<i>!!</i>",

  appendTo: "body"      // Finally, append to any selector

});
user_86320130

If you have jQuery already available, use it. If you don't want to host it, use Google's hosted version. In the end is it always calling the native javascript createElement or innerHTML methods anyway. So I'd use #2, and #3 if I specifically had to clone an existing element on the page.

user_2605280

You can add or insert elements into the DOM using two jQuery append() or prepend() methods. The append() method inserts content at the end of matching elements, while the prepend() method inserts content at the beginning of matching elements.

HTML Code:

<button>Add item</button>
<ul>
  <li>lorem ipsum</li>
  <li>lorem ipsum</li>
  <li>lorem ipsum</li>
</ul>

JQuery Code:

  $(document).ready(function(){
    $("button").click(function(){
      $("ul").append("<li>lorem ipsum</li>"); 
    });
  });

You can see an example here: How to add DOM element in jQuery

user_129033960

The cleaner way to do is using jQuery.

$('tr').addClass('myClass') like syntax. This is easy to read, understand and maintain.

user_1122220
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