Range: extractContents() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since March 2017.

The Range.extractContents() method moves contents of the Range from the document tree into a DocumentFragment.

Event listeners added using DOM Events are not retained during extraction. HTML attribute events are retained or duplicated as they are for the Node.cloneNode() method. HTML id attributes are also cloned, which can lead to an invalid document if a partially-selected node is extracted and appended to the document.

Partially selected nodes are cloned to include the parent tags necessary to make the document fragment valid.

Syntax

js
extractContents()

Parameters

None.

Return value

A DocumentFragment object.

Examples

Basic example

js
const range = document.createRange();
range.selectNode(document.getElementsByTagName("div").item(0));
const documentFragment = range.extractContents();
document.body.appendChild(documentFragment);

Moving items between containers

This example lets you move items between two containers. Select one or more item, and then click "swap" to move them to the opposite container.

HTML

html
<p id="list1">123456</p>
<button id="swap">Swap selected item(s)</button>
<p id="list2">abcdef</p>

CSS

css
body {
  pointer-events: none;
}

p {
  border: 1px solid;
  font-size: 2em;
  padding: 0.3em;
}

button {
  font-size: 1.2em;
  padding: 0.5em;
  pointer-events: auto;
}

JavaScript

js
const list1 = document.getElementById("list1");
const list2 = document.getElementById("list2");
const button = document.getElementById("swap");

button.addEventListener("click", (e) => {
  const selection = window.getSelection();

  for (let i = 0; i < selection.rangeCount; i++) {
    const range = selection.getRangeAt(i);

    if (
      range.commonAncestorContainer === list1 ||
      range.commonAncestorContainer.parentNode === list1
    ) {
      const documentFragment = range.extractContents();
      list2.appendChild(documentFragment);
    } else if (
      range.commonAncestorContainer === list2 ||
      range.commonAncestorContainer.parentNode === list2
    ) {
      const documentFragment = range.extractContents();
      list1.appendChild(documentFragment);
    }
  }
});

Result

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# dom-range-extractcontents

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also