How to Remove the ID Attribute From an Element With JavaScript

Tari Ibaba
Last updated on November 10, 2022
How to Remove the ID Attribute From an Element With JavaScript

To remove the ID attribute from an element, call the removeAttribute() method on the element, passing the string 'id' as an argument.

Example

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>
      Removing the ID Attribute from an Element with
      JavaScript
    </title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div class="box" id="box-1">This is a box</div>

    <script src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

Here's how we can remove the ID from the div element we created:

index.js

const box = document.getElementById('box-1');

console.log(box.getAttribute('id')); // box-1

box.removeAttribute('id');

console.log(box.getAttribute('id')); // null

The Element removeAttribute() method removes the attribute of an element with a specified name.

Note: If the specified attribute doesn't exist, removeAttribute() returns instead of throwing an error.

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Element setAttribute() method

If you would like to replace the ID of the element instead of removing it, you can use the setAttribute() method.

For example, we can change the ID of the div element we created earlier to a new value.

For example:

index.js

const box = document.getElementById('box-1');

console.log(box.getAttribute('id')); // box-1

box.setAttribute('id', 'new-id');

console.log(box.getAttribute('id')); // new-id

The Element setAttribute() method takes two arguments:

  1. name: A string specifying the name of the attribute whose value is to be set.
  2. value: A string containing the value to assign to the attribute.

We pass 'id' and the new id as the first and second arguments respectively, to set the ID attribute.

Note: If the attribute already exists on the element, the value is updated. Otherwise, a new attribute is added with the specified name and value.

The Element getAttribute() method

We've used the getAttribute() method a number of times in this article. Calling this method on an Element returns the value of the attribute with the specified name. So we call it with 'id' to get the ID of the element.

Note: If the attribute does not exist on the element, getAttribute() returns null or an empty string (''), depending on the browser.

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See also