How to replace a DOM element

Announcement 📣 next week, on Feb 26, I'll launch my JavaScript Fundamentals course. 10 modules, 91 lessons, 5 weeks of course. You can signup Feb 26, Feb 27 and Feb 28, then I'll close the registrations. Every day I will send you an email with questions and I read every reply you send me, and I will reply with suggestions. Sign up here and I'll shoot you an email when it's live! 🔥 ⤵️

Learning JavaScript? Download my free JavaScript Handbook 🔥

Say you have a DOM element, which you have a reference to (maybe retrieved using querySelector()).

To replace it with another DOM element, you can call the replaceWith() method on the first element, passing the second element as argument:

const el1 = document.querySelector(/* ... */)
const el2 = document.querySelector(/* ... */)

el1.replaceWith(el2)

Since Edge <17 and IE11 do not support it, you should transpile it to ES5 using Babel if you plan to support those browsers.

Another solution is to lookup the parent and use the replaceChild() method, which is much older and supported by all browsers:

const el1 = document.querySelector(/* ... */)
const el2 = document.querySelector(/* ... */)

el1.parentNode.replaceChild(el2, el1)