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JavaScript JavaScript and the DOM (Retiring) Making Changes to the DOM Removing an Element from the DOM

Posted by Shreemangal Sethi
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Shreemangal Sethi
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 15,552 Points

Not able to understand how to remove the list item element stored in firstListItem from the DOM.

When it says list item element does it mean the entire list stored in "ul". I am not able to remove the list item element using

firstListItem.removeChild(li)

Thanks for help

index.html 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>DOM Manipulation</title>
    </head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
    <body>
        <ul>
            <li id="first">First Item</li>
            <li id="second">Second Item</li>
            <li id="third">Third Item</li>
        </ul>
        <script src="app.js"></script>
    </body>
</html>
app.js 
let myList = document.getElementsByTagName('ul')[0];
let firstListItem = document.getElementById('first');


 firstListItem.removeChild('ul');
Morgan Welch
Morgan Welch
24,127 Points

You set firstListItem to document.getElementById('first') that just sets firstListItem to <li id="first">First Item</li>

firstListItem doesn't have any children so it does nothing.

What you want is 

let myList = document.getElementsByTagName('ul')[0];
myList.removeChild(first);
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,270 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,270 Points

Not quite — the name of the variable that has the reference to to child element is not "first" but "firstListItem".

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,270 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,270 Points

To use "removeChild", you need to call the method on the parent, and pass the child being removed as the argument.

In the previous tasks you have selected both the parent and child elements and stored them in variables, so now you can use those variables to call the method.

You won't need any string literals for the last task.