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DataTransferItemList: add() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨November 2016⁩.

The DataTransferItemList.add() method creates a new DataTransferItem using the specified data and adds it to the drag data list. The item may be a File or a string of a given type. If the item is successfully added to the list, the newly-created DataTransferItem object is returned.

Syntax

add(data, type)
add(file)

Parameters

data

A string representing the drag item's data.

type

A string of the drag item's type. Some example types are text/html and text/plain.

file

A File object. No type needs to be given in this case.

Return value

A DataTransferItem containing the specified data. If the drag item couldn't be created (for example, if the associated DataTransfer object has no data store), null is returned.

Exceptions

NotSupportedError DOMException

Thrown if the string data parameter was provided, and the list already contains an item whose kind is "Plain Unicode string" and whose type is equal to the specified type parameter.

Examples

This example shows the use of the add() method.

HTML

<div>
  <p id="source" draggable="true">
    Select this element, drag it to the Drop Zone and then release the selection
    to move the element.
  </p>
</div>
<div id="target">Drop Zone</div>

CSS

div {
  margin: 0em;
  padding: 2em;
}
#source {
  color: blue;
  border: 1px solid black;
}
#target {
  border: 1px solid black;
}

JavaScript

const source = document.getElementById("source");
const target = document.getElementById("target");

source.addEventListener("dragstart", (ev) => {
  console.log("dragStart");
  // Add this element's id to the drag payload so the drop handler will
  // know which element to add to its tree
  const dataList = ev.dataTransfer.items;
  dataList.add(ev.target.id, "text/plain");
  // Add some other items to the drag payload
  dataList.add("<p>Paragraph…</p>", "text/html");
  dataList.add("http://www.example.org", "text/uri-list");
});

source.addEventListener("dragend", (ev) => {
  console.log("dragEnd");
  const dataList = ev.dataTransfer.items;
  for (let i = 0; i < dataList.length; i++) {
    dataList.remove(i);
  }
  // Clear any remaining drag data
  dataList.clear();
});

target.addEventListener("drop", (ev) => {
  console.log("Drop");
  ev.preventDefault();
  // Loop through the dropped items and log their data
  for (const item of event.dataTransfer.items) {
    if (item.kind === "string" && item.type.match("^text/plain")) {
      // This item is the target node
      item.getAsString((s) => {
        ev.target.appendChild(document.getElementById(s));
      });
    } else if (item.kind === "string" && item.type.match("^text/html")) {
      // Drag data item is HTML
      item.getAsString((s) => {
        console.log(`… Drop: HTML = ${s}`);
      });
    } else if (item.kind === "string" && item.type.match("^text/uri-list")) {
      // Drag data item is URI
      item.getAsString((s) => {
        console.log(`… Drop: URI = ${s}`);
      });
    }
  }
});

target.addEventListener("dragover", (ev) => {
  console.log("dragOver");
  ev.preventDefault();
  // Set the dropEffect to move
  ev.dataTransfer.dropEffect = "move";
});

Result

Specifications

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
add 13 12 50 12 6 18 50 ≤14 6 1.0 4.4 6

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https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/DataTransferItemList/add