Document: createAttributeNS() 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 createAttributeNS() method of the Document interface creates a new attribute node with the specified namespace URI and qualified name.

The object created is a node implementing the Attr interface. The DOM does not enforce what sort of attributes can be added to a particular element in this manner.

Syntax

js
createAttributeNS(namespaceURI, qualifiedName)

Parameters

namespaceURI

A string that specifies the namespaceURI to associate with the attribute, or the empty string. Some important namespace URIs are:

HTML

http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml

SVG

http://www.w3.org/2000/svg

MathML

http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML

qualifiedName

A string containing the qualified name of the new attribute. The name property of the created attribute is initialized with this value.

The format of the qualified name is prefix:localName or localName, where the parts are defined as:

prefix Optional

A "short alias" for the namespace. The prefix is optional, but if it is specified the namespaceURI parameter must also be specified. If the prefix is set to xml or xmlns, the namespaceURI must be set to http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace or http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/, respectively.

The value is used to initialize the new attribute's prefix property. Defaults to null.

localName

The local name of the attribute. The value is used to initialize the new attribute's localName property.

Return value

The new Attr node.

Exceptions

NamespaceError DOMException

Thrown if the namespaceURI value is:

  • not a valid namespace URI.
  • set to the empty string when prefix has a value.
  • not the value http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace or http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/ when prefix is set to xml or xmlns, respectively.
InvalidCharacterError DOMException

Thrown if either the prefix or localName is not valid:

  • The prefix must have at least one character, and cannot contain ASCII whitespace, NULL, /, or > (U+0000, U+002F, or U+003E, respectively).
  • The localName must have at least one character, and may not contain ASCII whitespace, NULL, /, = or > (U+0000, U+002F, U+003D, or U+003E, respectively).

Note: Earlier versions of the specification were more restrictive, requiring that the localName be a valid XML name.

Examples

Basic usage

js
const node = document.getElementById("svg");
const a = document.createAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/2000/svg", "viewBox");
a.value = "0 0 100 100";
node.setAttributeNode(a);
console.log(node.getAttribute("viewBox")); // "0 0 100 100"

Specifications

Specification
DOM
# dom-document-createattributens

Browser compatibility

desktop mobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
createAttributeNS
Chrome – Full support
Chrome 1 (Release date: 2008-12-11)
footnote Full support
Edge – Full support
Edge 12 (Release date: 2015-07-29)
footnote Full support
Firefox – Full support
Firefox 1 (Release date: 2004-11-09)
footnote Full support
Opera – Full support
Opera 12.1 (Release date: 2012-11-20)
footnote Full support
Safari – Full support
Safari 1 (Release date: 2003-06-23)
footnote Full support
Chrome Android – Full support
Chrome Android 18 (Release date: 2012-06-27)
footnote Full support
Firefox for Android – Full support
Firefox for Android 4 (Release date: 2011-03-29)
footnote Full support
Opera Android – Full support
Opera Android 12.1 (Release date: 2012-10-09)
footnote Full support
Safari on iOS – Full support
Safari on iOS 1 (Release date: 2007-06-29)
footnote Full support
Samsung Internet – Full support
Samsung Internet 1 (Release date: 2013-04-27)
footnote Full support
WebView Android – Full support
WebView Android 4.4 (Release date: 2013-12-09)
footnote Full support
WebView on iOS – Full support
WebView on iOS 1 (Release date: 2007-06-29)
footnote Full support
Emoji and more Unicode in element and attribute names and namespace prefix (valid names match HTML parser)
Chrome – Full support
Chrome 143 (Release date: 2025-12-02)
footnote Full support
Edge – Full support
Edge 143 (Release date: 2025-12-05)
footnote Full support
Firefox – Full support
Firefox 149 (Release date: 2026-03-24)
footnote Full support
Opera – Full support
Opera 127 (Release date: 2026-02-02)
footnote Full support
Safari – No support
Safari
footnote No support
Chrome Android – Full support
Chrome Android 143 (Release date: 2025-12-02)
footnote Full support
Firefox for Android – Full support
Firefox for Android 149 (Release date: 2026-03-24)
footnote Full support
Opera Android – Full support
Opera Android 94 (Release date: 2026-01-13)
footnote Full support
Safari on iOS – No support
Safari on iOS
footnote No support
Samsung Internet – No support
Samsung Internet
footnote No support
WebView Android – Full support
WebView Android 143 (Release date: 2025-12-02)
footnote Full support
WebView on iOS – No support
WebView on iOS
footnote No support

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support
No support
No support

See also