Remove dom element without knowing its parent?

Question

Is it possible to remove a dom element that has no parent other than the body tag? I know this would be easy with a framework like jquery, but I'm trying to stick to straight javascript.

Here's the code I've found to do it otherwise:

function removeElement(parentDiv, childDiv){
     if (childDiv == parentDiv) {
          alert("The parent div cannot be removed.");
     }
     else if (document.getElementById(childDiv)) {     
          var child = document.getElementById(childDiv);
          var parent = document.getElementById(parentDiv);
          parent.removeChild(child);
     }
     else {
          alert("Child div has already been removed or does not exist.");
          return false;
     }
}   

Thanks!

Answer 1

You should be able to get the parent of the element, then remove the element from that

function removeElement(el) {
el.parentNode.removeChild(el);
}

Update

You can set this as a new method on the HTMLElement:

HTMLElement.prototype.remove = function() { this.parentNode.removeChild(this); return this; }

And then do el.remove() (which will also return the element)

Answer 2

childDiv.remove();

works in Chrome 25.0.1364.155

Note that this does not work in IE11 or Opera Mini but is supported by all other browsers.

See here: reference to childnode-remove on caniuse

Answer 3

I think you can do something like...

var child = document.getElementById(childDiv);
//var parent = document.getElementById(parentDiv);
child.parentNode.removeChild(child);

See node.parentNode for more info on that.

Answer 4

document.body.removeChild(child);

Answer 5

Removing element using outerHTML property

remElement(document.getElementById('title'));
remElement(document.getElementById('alpha'));

function remElement(obj) {
obj.outerHTML="";
}

Answer 6

This function to simply remove an element using id:

function removeElement (id) { 
  document.getElementById(id).parentElement.removeChild(document.getElementById(id));
}

Answer 7

OK, you basically don't need to know the parent to delete a DOM element from DOM, look at the below code, see how is the order to delete a node element in JavaScript:

Element + parentNode + removeChild(Element);

As you see we find the element first, then using .parentNode and then remove the child which is the Element again, so we don't need to know the parent at all!

So now look the real code:

var navigation = document.getElementById('navigation');
if(navigation) {
  navigation.parentNode.removeChild(navigation);
}

or as a function

function removeNode(element) {
  if(element) { //check if it's not null
    element.parentNode.removeChild(element);
  } 
} //call it like : removeNode(document.getElementById('navigation'));

Also jQuery has remove() function which is widely use, like:

$('#navigation').remove();

Also there is native ChildNode.remove() which is not in IE and old browsers, but you can polyfill it, look the suggested polyfill from MDN:

Polyfill
You can polyfill the remove() method in Internet Explorer 9 and higher with the following code:

//from:https://github.com/jserz/js_piece/blob/master/DOM/ChildNode/remove()/remove().md
(function (arr) {
  arr.forEach(function (item) {
    if (item.hasOwnProperty('remove')) {
      return;
    }
    Object.defineProperty(item, 'remove', {
      configurable: true,
      enumerable: true,
      writable: true,
      value: function remove() {
        this.parentNode.removeChild(this);
      }
    });
  });
})([Element.prototype, CharacterData.prototype, DocumentType.prototype]);

If you like to learn more about it, visit this link on MDN.