DOMImplementation: createHTMLDocument() 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 DOMImplementation.createHTMLDocument() method creates a new HTML Document.

Syntax

createHTMLDocument()
createHTMLDocument(title)

Parameters

title Optional: A string containing the title to give the new HTML document.

Examples

This example creates a new HTML document and inserts it into an <iframe> in the current document.

Here's the HTML for this example:

html

<button id="create-doc">Create new document</button>
<iframe id="theFrame" src="about:blank"></iframe>

The JavaScript implementation of makeDocument() follows:

function makeDocument() {
  const frame = document.getElementById("theFrame");

  const doc = document.implementation.createHTMLDocument("New Document");
  const p = doc.createElement("p");
  p.textContent = "This is a new paragraph.";

  try {
    doc.body.appendChild(p);
  } catch (e) {
    console.log(e);
  }

  // Copy the new HTML document into the frame

  const destDocument = frame.contentDocument;
  const srcNode = doc.documentElement;
  const newNode = destDocument.importNode(srcNode, true);

  destDocument.replaceChild(newNode, destDocument.documentElement);
}

document.getElementById("create-doc").addEventListener("click", makeDocument);

The code handles creating the new HTML document and inserting some content into it. createHTMLDocument() constructs a new HTML document whose <title> is "New Document". Then we create a new paragraph element with some simple content, and then the new paragraph gets inserted into the new document.

destDocument stores the contentDocument of the frame; this is the document into which we'll be injecting the new content. The next two lines handle importing the contents of our new document into the new document's context. Finally, destDocument.replaceChild actually replaces the contents of the frame with the new document's contents.

The returned document is pre-constructed with the following HTML:

html

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en-US">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <title>title</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    …
  </body>
</html>

Specifications

Specification
DOM # ref-for-dom-domimplementation-createhtmldocument①

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on ⁨Jun 19, 2025⁩ by MDN contributors.

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