DOMImplementation: createHTMLDocument() method

The DOMImplementation.createHTMLDocument() method creates a new HTML Document.

Syntax

js

createHTMLDocument()
createHTMLDocument(title)

Parameters

title Optional

A string containing the title to give the new HTML document.

Return value

A new HTML Document object.

Examples

This example creates a new HTML document and inserts it into an <iframe> in the current document.

Here's the HTML for this example:

html

<body>
  <p>
    Click <a href="javascript:makeDocument()">here</a> to create a new document
    and insert it below.
  </p>
  <iframe id="theFrame" src="about:blank" />
</body>

The JavaScript implementation of makeDocument() follows:

js

function makeDocument() {
  let frame = document.getElementById("theFrame");

  let doc = document.implementation.createHTMLDocument("New Document");
  let p = doc.createElement("p");
  p.textContent = "This is a new paragraph.";

  try {
    doc.body.appendChild(p);
  } catch (e) {
    console.log(e);
  }

  // Copy the new HTML document into the frame

  let destDocument = frame.contentDocument;
  let srcNode = doc.documentElement;
  let newNode = destDocument.importNode(srcNode, true);

  destDocument.replaceChild(newNode, destDocument.documentElement);
}

The code in lines 4–12 handle creating the new HTML document and inserting some content into it. Line 4 uses createHTMLDocument() to construct a new HTML document whose <title> is "New Document". Lines 5 and 6 create a new paragraph element with some simple content, and then lines 8–12 handle inserting the new paragraph into the new document.

Line 16 pulls the contentDocument of the frame; this is the document into which we'll be injecting the new content. The next two lines handle importing the contents of our new document into the new document's context. Finally, line 20 actually replaces the contents of the frame with the new document's contents.

View Live Examples

The returned document is pre-constructed with the following HTML:

html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <title>title</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    …
  </body>
</html>

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# ref-for-dom-domimplementation-createhtmldocument①

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also