I'm trying to remove all child elements from a node but leave the actual text content of the node. I.e. go from this:

<h3>
   MY TEXT
   <a href='...'>Link</a>
   <a href='...'>Link</a>
   <select>
      <option>Value</option>
      <option>Value</option>
   </select>
</h3>

to this:

<h3>
   MY TEXT
</h3>

I know that there are a million easy ways to do this in jQuery, but it's not an option for this project... I've got to use plain old javascript.

This:

var obj = document.getElementById("myID");
if ( obj.hasChildNodes() ){
    while ( obj.childNodes){
        obj.removeChild( obj.firstChild );       
    }
}

obviously results in just <h3></h3>, and when I tried:

var h3 = content_block.getElementsByTagName('h3')[0];
var h3_children = h3.getElementsByTagName('*');
for(var i=0;i<h3_children.length;i++){
   h3_children[i].parentNode.removeChild(h3_children[i]);
}

It gets hung up part way through. I figured it was having trouble removing the options, but altering the for loop to skip removal unless h3_children[i].parentNode==h3 (i.e. only remove first-level child-elements) stops after removing the first <a> element.

I'm sure I'm missing something super obvious here, but perhaps it's time to turn to the crowd. How can I remove all child elements but leave the first-level textNodes alone? And why doesn't the above approach work?

EDITS

There are a couple of working solutions posted, which is great, but I'm still a little mystified as to why looping through and removing h3.getElementsByTagName('*') doesn't work. A similar approach(adapted from Blender) likewise does not plete the process of removing child nodes. Any thoughts as to why this would be?

I'm trying to remove all child elements from a node but leave the actual text content of the node. I.e. go from this:

<h3>
   MY TEXT
   <a href='...'>Link</a>
   <a href='...'>Link</a>
   <select>
      <option>Value</option>
      <option>Value</option>
   </select>
</h3>

to this:

<h3>
   MY TEXT
</h3>

I know that there are a million easy ways to do this in jQuery, but it's not an option for this project... I've got to use plain old javascript.

This:

var obj = document.getElementById("myID");
if ( obj.hasChildNodes() ){
    while ( obj.childNodes){
        obj.removeChild( obj.firstChild );       
    }
}

obviously results in just <h3></h3>, and when I tried:

var h3 = content_block.getElementsByTagName('h3')[0];
var h3_children = h3.getElementsByTagName('*');
for(var i=0;i<h3_children.length;i++){
   h3_children[i].parentNode.removeChild(h3_children[i]);
}

It gets hung up part way through. I figured it was having trouble removing the options, but altering the for loop to skip removal unless h3_children[i].parentNode==h3 (i.e. only remove first-level child-elements) stops after removing the first <a> element.

I'm sure I'm missing something super obvious here, but perhaps it's time to turn to the crowd. How can I remove all child elements but leave the first-level textNodes alone? And why doesn't the above approach work?

EDITS

There are a couple of working solutions posted, which is great, but I'm still a little mystified as to why looping through and removing h3.getElementsByTagName('*') doesn't work. A similar approach(adapted from Blender) likewise does not plete the process of removing child nodes. Any thoughts as to why this would be?

• javascript
• dom
• nodes
• removechild

• 1 Oddly, this removes all but one <a> element: jsfiddle/rSbmR – Blender Commented Oct 19, 2012 at 5:51
• @Blender - Yeah, I was getting similar results with the getElementsByTagName loop (removal of most but not all of the elements). Any thoughts as to why? – Ben D Commented Oct 19, 2012 at 6:05

5 Answers 5

var h3=content_block.getElementsByTagName("h3")[0];
for(var i=0;i<h3.childNodes.length;i++)
{
  if(h3.childNodes[i].nodeType==3)//TEXT_NODE
  {
    continue;
  }
  else
  {
    h3.removeChild(h3.childNodes[i]);
    i--;
  }
}

JSFiddle demo

Edit:

Combined the i-- to make it look shorter:

var h3=content_block.getElementsByTagName("h3")[0];
for(var i=0;i<h3.childNodes.length;i++)
{
  if(h3.childNodes[i].nodeType==3)//TEXT_NODE
    continue;
  else
    h3.removeChild(h3.childNodes[i--]);
}

Edit #2:

Pointed out by @SomeGuy, make it even shorter:

var h3=content_block.getElementsByTagName("h3")[0];
for(var i=0;i<h3.childNodes.length;i++)
{
  if(h3.childNodes[i].nodeType!=3)//not TEXT_NODE
    h3.removeChild(h3.childNodes[i--]);
}

The brackets can be removed too, but that would be "less readable" and "confusing", so I keep it there.

You can check properties .nodeType or .nodeName for each node.

Text nodes have these properties set to:

.nodeType == 3
.nodeName == '#text'`

For instance:

var e = obj.firstChild
while (e) {
   if (e.nodeType == 3) {
      e = e.nextSibling
   } else {
      var n = e.nextSibling
      obj.removeChild(e)
      e = n
   }
}

try this. I am assuming you will keep ant text here.

var h3 = document.getElementsByTagName('h3')[0];

if (h3.hasChildNodes()) {
    for (var i = h3.childNodes.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
        if (h3.childNodes[i].nodeName != "#text")
            h3.removeChild(h3.childNodes[i]);
    }
}

Hope it will work.

Well, The thing I used (inspired from the answers here) is somewhat like:

   var h3 = document.getElementsByTagName("h3")[0];
    Array.protoype.filter.call(h3.childNodes, function(child){
        if (child.nodeType != 3) {
            h3.removeChild(child);
        }
    });