Replace Node Name

Question

Is it possible to replace a nodes name? Like:

HTML:

<strong id="element">Text</strong>

Javascript:

var element = document.getElementById("element");
    element.nodeName = "b";

As I see it's not working, if it's not possible in this way, then how can it be done?

Why I need it:

I'm building a Text Editor, and IE uses strong instead of b in the execCommand() function and I would like to change that, I tried to build the execCommand("bold") from scratch but there is a lots of problem and differences even between IE 8 and 9. So now I decided to change it's node name, it would be really easy, but doesn't works.. :(

Note: I need this to work only in Internet Explorer.

Thanks

Answer 1

No, but you can replace the node easily:

var oldNode = document.getElementById('element'),
    newNode = document.createElement('b'),
    node,
    nextNode;

node = oldNode.firstChild;
while (node) {
    nextNode = node.nextSibling;
    newNode.appendChild(node);
    node = nextNode;
}

newNode.className = oldNode.className;
// Do attributes too if you need to
newNode.id = oldNode.id; // (Not invalid, they're not both in the tree at the same time)
oldNode.parentNode.replaceChild(newNode, oldNode);

Live example

Many thanks to Haochi for pointing out replaceChild, I had done this:

oldNode.parentNode.insertBefore(newNode, oldNode);
oldNode.parentNode.removeChild(oldNode);

Live example ...but replaceChild is cleaner.

Docs:

• DOM2 core
• DOM2 HTML
• DOM3 core