How to remove all children from a DOM element
Given a DOM element, how do you remove all its children?
Given an item in the DOM, use querySelector()
to identify it, like this:
const item = document.querySelector('#itemId')
then, to remove all its children elements, you have a few different solutions.
The fastest way looks like this:
item.innerHTML = ''
Another solution that is suggested is this: create a loop, check if the firstChild
property is defined (the element has at least a child) and then remove it:
const item = document.querySelector('#itemId')
while (item.firstChild) {
item.removeChild(item.firstChild)
}
The loop ends when all children are removed.
The first, in most performance benchmarks I checked, looks like being the fastest solution.
→ I wrote 17 books to help you become a better developer:
- C Handbook
- Command Line Handbook
- CSS Handbook
- Express Handbook
- Git Cheat Sheet
- Go Handbook
- HTML Handbook
- JS Handbook
- Laravel Handbook
- Next.js Handbook
- Node.js Handbook
- PHP Handbook
- Python Handbook
- React Handbook
- SQL Handbook
- Svelte Handbook
- Swift Handbook
Also, JOIN MY CODING BOOTCAMP, an amazing cohort course that will be a huge step up in your coding career - covering React, Next.js - next edition February 2025