Remove element by id

Question

When removing an element with standard JavaScript, you must go to its parent first:

var element = document.getElementById("element-id");
element.parentNode.removeChild(element);

Having to go to the parent node first seems a bit odd to me, is there a reason JavaScript works like this?

Answer 1

You could make a remove function so that you wouldn't have to think about it every time:

function removeElement(id) {
    var elem = document.getElementById(id);
    return elem.parentNode.removeChild(elem);
}

Answer 2

you can just use element.remove()

Answer 3

It's what the DOM supports. Search that page for "remove" or "delete" and removeChild is the only one that removes a node.

Answer 4

According to DOM level 4 specs, which is the current version in development, there are some new handy mutation methods available: append(), prepend(), before(), after(), replace(), and remove().

http://red-team-design.com/removing-an-element-with-plain-javascript-remove-method/