Document.createProcessingInstruction()

createProcessingInstruction() generates a new processing instruction node and returns it.

The new node usually will be inserted into an XML document in order to accomplish anything with it, such as with node.insertBefore.

Syntax

piNode = document.createProcessingInstruction(target, data)

Parameters

  • piNode is the resulting ProcessingInstruction node.
  • target is a string containing the first part of the processing instruction (i.e., <?target … ?>)
  • data is a string containing any information the processing instruction should carry, after the target. The data is up to you, but it can't contain ?>, since that closes the processing instruction.

Exceptions

DOM_INVALID_CHARACTER

Throws if either of the following are true:

  • The processing instruction target is invalid — it should be a valid XML name that doesn't contain "xml", "XML", or any case combination of the two, other than standardized ones such as <?xml-stylesheet ?>.
  • The closing processing instruction sequence (?>) is part of the data.

Example

var doc = new DOMParser().parseFromString('<foo />', 'application/xml');
var pi = doc.createProcessingInstruction('xml-stylesheet', 'href="mycss.css" type="text/css"');

doc.insertBefore(pi, doc.firstChild);

console.log(new XMLSerializer().serializeToString(doc));
// Displays: <?xml-stylesheet href="mycss.css" type="text/css"?><foo/>

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard (DOM)
# ref-for-dom-document-createprocessinginstruction①

Browser compatibility

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