How to create Document objects with JavaScript

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There are two methods defined in specifications, createDocument from DOM Core Level 2 and createHTMLDocument from HTML5. The former creates an XML document (including XHTML), the latter creates a HTML document. Both reside, as functions, on the DOMImplementation interface.

var impl    = document.implementation,
    xmlDoc  = impl.createDocument(namespaceURI, qualifiedNameStr, documentType),
    htmlDoc = impl.createHTMLDocument(title);

In reality, these methods are rather young and only implemented in recent browser releases. According to http://quirksmode.org and MDN, the following browsers support createHTMLDocument:

  • Chrome 4
  • Opera 10
  • Firefox 4
  • Internet Explorer 9
  • Safari 4

Interestingly enough, you can (kind of) create a HTML document in older versions of Internet Explorer, using ActiveXObject:

var htmlDoc = new ActiveXObject("htmlfile");

The resulting object will be a new document, which can be manipulated just like any other document.

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