JavaScript TextNode update

Question

If I have a

var t = document.createTextNode(text)
parent.appendChild(t);

Is it possible to simply update the contents of t?

I would like to change the text inside the parent without using removeChild, createTextNode and appendChild. Why would I need this instead of just using innerHTML? Because I don't want to update the contents of the element with HTML code and the text may contain special characters, such as < or & which should be parsed by TextNode's DOM methods.

Thanks,
Tom

Answer 1

Be aware that adjacent text nodes are collapsed into one (since there is really no way to distinguish two adjacent text nodes).

The contents of a text node can be updated using it's nodeValue property (see MDC).

Since a text node by it's very definition cannot contain any markup, there is no innerHTML property.

Answer 2

If you keep the instance of the TextNode object (t in your example code) then you can change the content using various functions like replaceData(), substringData(), etc..

See this page for a nice reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms535905(VS.85).aspx#

Answer 3

parent.innerText = text;