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Document: prepend() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨April 2018⁩.

The Document.prepend() method inserts a set of Node objects or strings before the first child of the document. Strings are inserted as equivalent Text nodes.

This method prepends a child to a Document. To prepend to an arbitrary element in the tree, see Element.prepend().

Syntax

prepend(param1)
prepend(param1, param2)
prepend(param1, param2, /* …, */ paramN)

Parameters

param1, …, paramN: A set of Node objects or strings to insert.

Return value

None (undefined).

Exceptions

HierarchyRequestError DOMException: Thrown when the node cannot be inserted at the specified point in the hierarchy.

Examples

Prepending a root element to a document

If you try to prepend an element to an existing HTML document, it might throw a HierarchyRequestError DOMException given a <html> element already exists.

let html = document.createElement("html");
document.prepend(html);
// HierarchyRequestError: The operation would yield an incorrect node tree.

If you are creating a new document without any existing element, you can prepend a root HTML element (or a root SVG element):

let doc = new Document();
let html = document.createElement("html");
doc.prepend(html);

doc.children; // HTMLCollection [<html>]

Specifications

Specification
DOM> # ref-for-dom-parentnode-prepend①>

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
`prepend`	54	17	49	41	10	54	49	41	10	6.0	54	10