CharacterData: before() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The before() method of the CharacterData interface inserts a set of Node objects and strings in the children list of the CharacterData's parent, just before the CharacterData node.

Strings are inserted as Text nodes; the string is being passed as argument to the Text() constructor.

Syntax

js
before(...nodes)

Parameters

nodes

A set of Node objects or strings to insert.

Exceptions

HierarchyRequestError DOMException

Thrown when the new nodes cannot be inserted at the specified point in the hierarchy, that is if one of the following conditions is met:

Examples

The before() method allows you to insert new nodes before a CharacterData node leaving the current node's data unchanged.

js
const h1TextNode = document.querySelector("h1").firstChild;
h1TextNode.before("h1# ");

h1TextNode.parentElement.childNodes;
// NodeList [#text "h1# ", #text "CharacterData.before()"]

h1TextNode.data;
// "CharacterData.before()"

Specifications

Specification
DOM
# ref-for-dom-childnode-before①

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
before

Legend

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Full support
Full support

See also