Document: createDocumentFragment() method

{{APIRef("DOM WHATWG")}}

Creates a new empty {{domxref("DocumentFragment")}} into which DOM nodes can be added to build an offscreen DOM tree.

Syntax

createDocumentFragment()

Parameters

None.

Return value

A newly created, empty, {{domxref("DocumentFragment")}} object, which is ready to have nodes inserted into it.

Usage notes

DocumentFragments are DOM {{domxref("Node")}} objects which are never part of the main DOM tree. The usual use case is to create the document fragment, append elements to the document fragment and then append the document fragment to the DOM tree. In the DOM tree, the document fragment is replaced by all its children.

Since the document fragment is in memory and not part of the main DOM tree, using document fragments could result in better performance in some older engines.

You can also use the DocumentFragment constructor to create a new fragment:

const fragment = new DocumentFragment();

Examples

This example creates a list of major web browsers in a DocumentFragment, then adds the new DOM subtree to the document to be displayed.

HTML

<ul id="ul"></ul>

JavaScript

const element = document.getElementById("ul"); // assuming ul exists
const fragment = document.createDocumentFragment();
const browsers = ["Firefox", "Chrome", "Opera", "Safari"];

browsers.forEach((browser) => {
  const li = document.createElement("li");
  li.textContent = browser;
  fragment.appendChild(li);
});

element.appendChild(fragment);

Result

{{EmbedLiveSample("Examples", 600, 140)}}

Specifications

{{Specifications}}

Browser compatibility

{{Compat}}

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