Document: append() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. Its been available across browsers since April 2018.

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The Document.append() method inserts a set of Node objects or strings after the last child of the document. Strings are inserted as equivalent Text nodes.

This method appends a child to a Document. To append to an arbitrary element in the tree, see Element.append().

Syntax

append(param1)
append(param1, param2)
append(param1, param2, /* , */ paramN)

Parameters

param1, , paramN: A set of Node objects or strings to insert.

Return value

None (undefined).

Exceptions

HierarchyRequestError DOMException: Thrown when the node cannot be inserted at the specified point in the hierarchy.

Examples

Appending a root element to a document

If you try to append an element to an existing HTML document, it might throw a HierarchyRequestError DOMException given a <html> element already exists.

let html = document.createElement("html");
document.append(html);
// HierarchyRequestError: The operation would yield an incorrect node tree.

If you are creating a new document without any existing element, you can append a root HTML element (or a root SVG element):

let doc = new Document();
let html = document.createElement("html");
doc.append(html);

doc.children; // HTMLCollection [<html>]

Specifications

Specification
DOM # ref-for-dom-parentnode-append

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on Jul 12, 2024 by MDN contributors.

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