Range: deleteContents() 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.deleteContents() method removes all completely-selected nodes within this range from the document. For the partially selected nodes at the start or end of the range, only the selected portion of the text is deleted, while the node itself remains intact. Afterwards, the range is collapsed to the end of the last selected node.

<p>paragraph 1</p><p>paragraph 2</p><p>paragraph 3</p>
       ^----------- selection ------------^

deleteContents() returns:

<p>para</p><p>graph 3</p>

Unlike Range.extractContents(), this method does not return a DocumentFragment containing the deleted content.

Syntax

deleteContents()

Parameters

None.

Return value

None (undefined).

Examples

Using deleteContents()

Select some text, possibly spanning multiple paragraphs, and then click the button to delete the selected text. Open your DOM inspector to check the updated DOM structure.

html

<p>paragraph 1</p>
<p>paragraph 2</p>
<p>paragraph 3</p>
<button id="delete">Delete selected text</button>
<button id="reset">Reset</button>

const button = document.getElementById("delete");
const reset = document.getElementById("reset");
const output = document.getElementById("output");

button.addEventListener("click", () => {
  const range = document.getSelection().getRangeAt(0);
  range.deleteContents();
});

reset.addEventListener("click", () => {
  window.location.reload();
});

Specifications

Specification
DOM # dom-range-deletecontents