Remove all child elements of a DOM node in JavaScript

Question

How would I go about removing all of the child elements of a DOM node in JavaScript?

Say I have the following (ugly) HTML:

    &         


        

Answer 1

Just saw someone mention this question in another and thought I would add a method I didn't see yet:

function clear(el) {
    el.parentNode.replaceChild(el.cloneNode(false), el);
}

var myNode = document.getElementById("foo");
clear(myNode);

The clear function is taking the element and using the parent node to replace itself with a copy without it's children. Not much performance gain if the element is sparse but when the element has a bunch of nodes the performance gains are realized.