Moving a div from inside one div to another div using Prototype?

Question

In prototype or normal-but-cross-browser-compatible Javascript, how do I move the contents of a div to the contents of another div?

Inside the div is a form with ids

Answer 1

To move the contents of here into there, you're basically after:

$('there').insert($('here').childNodes);

Sadly, that doesn't work.

As with the other two answers, it looks like you have to resort to plain JavaScript with prototype only providing a shorthand for document.getElementById.

var frag = document.createDocumentFragment();
for (var c = $('nav').firstChild, n; c; c = n) {
    n = c.nextSibling;
    frag.appendChild(c);
}
$('header').appendChild(frag);

(See John Resign's blog for performance stats on DocumentFragments: http://ejohn.org/blog/dom-documentfragments/)

Answer 2

Perhaps not a major point, but there is no Node.migrateChild() built-in Javascript interface method. If a fragment already has a parent elsewhere in the DOM (as div id='MacGuffin' does in example markup above), appendChild() quietly detaches the argument fragment from any current parent before reattaching under the new parent. In my mind migrateChild() would be a more semantically meaningful method name than appendChild(), less need for StackOverflow developer searches to allude to its more powerful abilities.

Answer 3

To move the contents of here into there, this works, as long as here encloses everything you want to move, like a <div>:

$('there').insert($('here').descendants()[0]);

descendants() returns an array, and insert takes content, so use the first element.

Answer 4

You can add this at the very end of the BODY tag:

<script>
  document.getElementById('there').appendChild(
    document.getElementById('MacGuffin')
  );
</script>

MacGuffin will be moved automatically from one to the other.
And there won't be any flickering.