Set content of HTML with Javascript

Question

In a webpage I am calling a WebService that gives me an integer value. I need to display this value in a block of text. I am currently using an HTML <span>.

So far, I've found two methods of putting my value in a span. innerText() is an IE proprietary way of doing it and innerHTML() is a non-standards compliant way, although widely supported.

What is the correct standards compliant way of setting the text between <span> and </span> from Javascript?

Answer 1

With modern browsers, you can set the textContent property, see Node.textContent:

var span = document.getElementById("myspan");
span.textContent = "some text";

Answer 2

This is standards compliant and cross-browser safe.

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/kv9pw/

var span = document.getElementById('someID');

while( span.firstChild ) {
    span.removeChild( span.firstChild );
}
span.appendChild( document.createTextNode("some new content") );

Answer 3

To do it without using a JavaScript library such as jQuery, you'd do it like this:

var span = document.getElementById("myspan"),
    text = document.createTextNode(''+intValue);
span.innerHTML = ''; // clear existing
span.appendChild(text);

If you do want to use jQuery, it's just this:

$("#myspan").text(''+intValue);

Answer 4

The Maximally Standards Compliant way to do it is to create a text node containing the text you want and append it to the span (removing any currently extant text nodes).

The way I would actually do it is to use jQuery's .text().