Range: cloneContents() 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 cloneContents() method of the Range interface copies the selected Node children of the range's commonAncestorContainer and puts them in a new DocumentFragment object.

Nodes are cloned using the same algorithm as Node.cloneNode(), which means event listeners attached with scripts are not cloned. HTML id attributes are cloned, which can lead to an invalid document through cloning.

The first and last selected children of commonAncestorContainer may be partially selected. In this case, the child node itself is cloned, but its content is only the part that is selected, by recursively cloning the range between the original range's start/end boundary and that child node's end/start boundary.

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

cloneContents() returns:

<p>graph 1</p><p>paragraph 2</p><p>para</p>

Syntax

js
cloneContents()

Parameters

None.

Return value

A DocumentFragment object.

Examples

js
range = document.createRange();
range.selectNode(document.getElementsByTagName("div").item(0));
documentFragment = range.cloneContents();
document.body.appendChild(documentFragment);

Specifications

Specification
DOM
# dom-range-clonecontents

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
cloneContents
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 9 (Release date: 2006-06-20)
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 10.1 (Release date: 2010-11-09)
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

Legend

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

Full support
Full support

See also