Creating and appending detached elements with d3.c

Let's say I create a simple graphic like this:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
  <script src="https://d3js.org/d3.v5.min.js"></script>
</head>

<body>
  <svg></svg>
  <script>
    const svg = d3.select('svg');
    const g = svg.append('g');

    g.append('g')
      .selectAll('g')
      .data([5, 10, 20, 40])
      .enter()
      .append('rect')
      .attr('fill', 'green')
      .attr('x', d => d)
      .attr('y', d => d)
      .attr('height', d => d)
      .attr('width', d => d);
  </script>
</body>

</html>

But instead of just appending to it, I want to create a detached <g> which can then be appended at will (e.g. it could be returned from a function).

With d3 V5 there is a d3.create() function which creates a detached element.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
  <script src="https://d3js.org/d3.v5.min.js"></script>
</head>

<body>
  <svg></svg>
  <script>
    const svg = d3.select('svg');
    const g = svg.append('g');

    const detachedG = d3.create('g');
    detachedG.selectAll('g')
      .data([5, 10, 20, 40])
      .enter()
      .append('rect')
      .attr('fill', 'green')
      .attr('x', d => d)
      .attr('y', d => d)
      .attr('height', d => d)
      .attr('width', d => d);

    g.append(() => detachedG.node());
  </script>
</body>

</html>

But it doesn't appear in the browser, even though the DOM looks the same.

Any ideas how to fix this?

Just namespace it:

const detachedG = d3.create('svg:g');

Here is the code with that change:

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
    <head><script src="https://d3js.org/d3.v5.min.js"></script></head>
    <body>
        <svg></svg>
        <script>
            const svg = d3.select('svg');
            const g = svg.append('g');

            const detachedG = d3.create('svg:g');
            detachedG.selectAll('g')
                .data([5,10,20,40])
                .enter()
                .append('rect')
                .attr('fill', 'green')
                .attr('x', d => d)
                .attr('y', d => d)
                .attr('height', d => d)
                .attr('width', d => d);

            g.append(() => detachedG.node());
        </script>
    </body>
</html>

Explanation

When appending SVG elements with the append() method, 98.47% of D3 programmers don't use namespace (source: Fakedata Inc.). Therefore, instead of:

selection.append("svg:rect")

We just do:

selection.append("rect")

So, why do you need a namespace here?

Internally, d3.create uses d3.creator calling it with document.documentElement:

export default function(name) {
    return select(creator(name).call(document.documentElement));
}

That changes the this for the d3.creator method. We normally don't use namespaces when we create SVG elements using append (which internally uses d3.creator), since: