What exactly can cause an "HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR: DOM Exception 3"-Error?

javascript jquery domexception
Julian Weimer picture Julian Weimer · Aug 10, 2009 · Viewed 75.9k times · Source

How exactly does it relate to jQuery? I know the library uses native javascript functions internally, but what exactly is it trying to do whenever such a problem appears?

Answer

Kelly Norton picture Kelly Norton · Aug 11, 2009

It means you've tried to insert a DOM node into a place in the DOM tree where it cannot go. The most common place I see this is on Safari which doesn't allow the following:

document.appendChild(document.createElement('div'));

Generally, this is just a mistake where this was actually intended:

document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('div'));

Other causes seen in the wild (summarized from comments):

  • You are attempting to append a node to itself
  • You are attempting to append null to a node
  • You are attempting to append a node to a text node.
  • Your HTML is invalid (e.g. failing to close your target node)
  • The browser thinks the HTML you are attempting to append is XML (fix by adding <!doctype html> to your injected HTML, or specifying the content type when fetching via XHR)

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