appendChild Method

Appends an element as a child to the object.

What's New for Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6

This method now applies to the attribute object.

Syntax

oElement = object.appendChild(oNode)

Parameters

oNode Required. Object that specifies the element to append.

Return Value

Returns a reference to the element that is appended to the object.

Remarks

The appendChild method appends elements to the end of the childNodes collection.
To display new elements on the page, you must append them within the body element. For example, the following syntax demonstrates how to add a div element to the body.
var oDiv=document.createElement("DIV");
document.body.appendChild(oDiv);
This method is accessible at run time. If elements are removed at run time, before the closing tag is parsed, areas of the document might not render.

Example

This example uses the appendChild method to add an item to an unordered list.

<SCRIPT>
function fnAppend(){
var oNewNode = document.createElement("LI");
oList.appendChild(oNewNode);
oNewNode.innerText="List node 5";
}
</SCRIPT>
<BODY>
<UL ID = oList>
<LI>List node 1
<LI>List node 2
<LI>List node 3
<LI>List node 4
</UL>
<INPUT
TYPE = "button"
VALUE = "Append Child"
onclick = "fnAppend()">
</BODY>

Standards Information

This method is defined in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 .

Applies To

A, ACRONYM, ADDRESS, attribute, B, BDO, BIG, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, BUTTON, CAPTION, CENTER, CITE, CODE, COL, COLGROUP, COMMENT, DD, DEL, DFN, DIR, DIV, DL, DT, EM, FIELDSET, FONT, FORM, FRAMESET, HEAD, hn, HTML, I, IFRAME, INPUT type=button, INPUT type=checkbox, INPUT type=file, INPUT type=image, INPUT type=password, INPUT type=radio, INPUT type=reset, INPUT type=submit, INPUT type=text, INS, KBD, LABEL, LEGEND, LI, LISTING, MAP, MARQUEE, MENU, nextID, OL, OPTION, P, PLAINTEXT, PRE, Q, S, SAMP, SMALL, SPAN, STRIKE, STRONG, SUB, SUP, TABLE, TBODY, TD, TEXTAREA, TFOOT, TH, THEAD, TR, TT, U, UL, VAR, XMP