In this article, we will learn how to create an element from a string using JavaScript. This can be used in situations where dynamically generated elements are required by the user.
This can be achieved using many approaches as given below.
- Using the createElement() Method
- Using the DOMParser
- Using the jQuery parseHTML() Method
Approach 1: Using the createElement() method
The createElement() method is used for creating elements within the DOM. It accepts two parameters, a tagName which is a string that defines the type of element to create, and an optional options object that can be used to modify how the element is created. Any element that is needed can be passed as a string in this function and this would return the specified element. This approach can only be used to create a single element from one string.
Example: In this example, we create a heading element by specifying the string as “h2”.
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head> <title> Create an element from a string </title></head><body> <h1 style="color:green"> neveropen </h1> <script> // Specify the string from which // the elements would be created let str = "h2"; let str2 = "p"; // Creating the elements let elem = document.createElement(str); let elem2 = document.createElement(str2); // Insert text in the element elem.innerText = "This is the new heading element"; elem2.innerText = "This is the new paragraph element"; // Add the element to the body document.body.appendChild(elem); document.body.appendChild(elem2); </script></body></html> |
Output:
Approach 2: Using the DOMParser
The DOMParser is an API in JavaScript that allows you to parse HTML strings and create a DOM document from it. It provides a way to programmatically create and manipulate HTML documents in memory.
Example:
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head> <title> Create an element from a string </title></head><body> <h1 style="color:green"> neveropen </h1> <script> // Create a string representing the element const elementString = `<div id="myElement">This heading is created by using DOMParser</div>`; // Create a new DOMParser const parser = new DOMParser(); // Parse the element string const doc = ] parser.parseFromString(elementString, 'text/html'); // Access the parsed element const element = doc.body.firstChild; // Now you can manipulate or append the element to the document document.body.appendChild(element); </script></body></html> |
Output:
Approach 3: Using the jQuery parseHTML() method
The parseHTML() method of jQuery is used to parse an HTML string so that it can be used to create elements according to the given HTML. This approach can be used to create multiple elements from the string.
Example: In this example, the string is specified with multiple elements that are parsed to HTML and added to the body of the document.
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head> <title> Create an element from a string </title></head><body> <!-- Include jQuery --> </script> <h1 style="color:green"> neveropen </h1> <script> // Define the HTML string to be parsed str = "<p>This <i>element</i> is created by" + " the <b>parseHTML()</b> " + "method in <i>jQuery</i></p>"; // Parsing the string into HTML html = $.parseHTML(str); // Append the element in the document $('body').append(html); </script></body></html> |
Output:
