HTMLTableElement.insertRow

The HTMLTableElement.insertRow() method inserts a new row in the table.

Syntax

var row = HTMLTableElement.insertRow(optional index = -1);

• HTMLTableElement is a reference to a HTML table element.
• index is the row index of the new row.
• row is assigned a reference to the new row. A reference to HTMLTableRowElement.
  If index is -1 or equal to the number of rows, the row is appended as the last row. If index is greater than the number of rows, an IndexSizeError exception will result. If index is omitted it defaults to -1.
• If a table has multiple tbody elements, by default, the new row is inserted into the last tbody. To insert the row into a specific tbody:
  var specific_tbody=document.getElementById(tbody_id);
var row=specific_tbody.insertRow(index)

Example

<table id="TableA">
<tr>
<td>Old top row</td>
</tr>
</table>
<script type="text/javascript">

function addRow(tableID) {
  // Get a reference to the table
  var tableRef = document.getElementById(tableID);

  // Insert a row in the table at row index 0
  var newRow = tableRef.insertRow(0);

  // Insert a cell in the row at index 0
  var newCell = newRow.insertCell(0);

  // Append a text node to the cell
  var newText = document.createTextNode('New top row');
  newCell.appendChild(newText);
}

// Call addRow() with the ID of a table
addRow('TableA');

</script>

To be valid in an HTML document, a TR must have at least one TD element.

Note that insertRow inserts the row directly into the table and returns a reference to the new row. The row does not need to be appended separately as would be the case if document.createElement() had been used to create the new TR element.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
WHATWG HTML Living Standard The definition of 'HTMLTableElement.insertRow()' in that specification.	Living Standard
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Specification The definition of 'HTMLTableElement.insertRow()' in that specification.	Recommendation	Specifies in more detail where the row is inserted.
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Specification The definition of 'HTMLTableElement.insertRow()' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

[1] Starting with Gecko 20.0 (Firefox 20.0 / Thunderbird 20.0 / SeaMonkey 2.17) the index argument has been made optional and defaults to -1 as per HTML specification.

See also

• HTMLTableRowElement.insertCell()