Delete parent element with javascript

Question

I'm having a problem with my javascript. I want to create some kind of to-do list but I can't figure out how to delete an item.

When creating an item, it adds to the list with a delete button, but I don't know what to do for the item to delete itself when clicking on the button.

I have this on the addItem function

var item = document.createElement("li");
item.innerHTML = itemText + "<button class='delete'>Delete item</button>";
list.appendChild(item);

And this would be the function to delete the item, but I don't know what to put inside ...

function deleteItem() {

}

Answer 1

You have a couple of options:

1. You could attach it as a handler directly to the button, then use this.parentNode to access the parent element. To actually remove it, you'd probably want to go one step higher up the hierarchy (DOM4 defines a remove method on elements, but it may not be supported by older browsers). That would look like this:

   var item = document.createElement("li");
   var btn = document.createElement("button");
   btn.className = "delete";
   btn.innerHTML = "Delete item";
   btn.addEventListener("click", deleteItem, false);
   item.appendChild(btn);
   list.appendChild(item);
   
   // ...
   
   function deleteItem() {
       this.parentNode.parentNode.removeChild(this.parentNode);
   }
   

2. Instead of that, though, I'd use event delegation: Hook click on the list, and if the click passed through one of these delete buttons, handle it then: Your code for adding the list item and button would be unchanged. In one place, you'd have this:

   list.addEventListener("click", deleteItem, false);
   

   and deleteItem would look like this:

   function deleteItem(e) {
       var btn = e.target;
   
       // Since `button` elements can have elements inside them,
       // we start with the element that was the target of the
       // event and look to see if any the event passed through
       // a `button class="delete"` on its way to the list.
       while (btn && (btn.tagName != "BUTTON" || !/\bdelete\b/.test(btn.className))) {
           btn = btn.parentNode;
           if (btn === this) {
               btn = null;
            }
       }
       if (btn) {
           // Yes, it did -- remove the button's parent from the list
           // (`this` is the list, because that's what we hooked the
           // event on)
           this.removeChild(btn.parentNode);
       }
   }
   

---

Here's a live example of #2:

var list, item, n;

// Get the list, add a handler to it
list = document.getElementById("the-list");
list.addEventListener("click", deleteItem, false);

// Add items to it; you can do this at any time
for (n = 1; n <= 10; ++n) {
  item = document.createElement("li");
  item.innerHTML = "Item #" + n + "<button class='delete'>Delete item</button>";
  list.appendChild(item);
}

// Handle clicks that might come through the delete button
function deleteItem(e) {
  var btn = e.target;
  while (btn && (btn.tagName != "BUTTON" || !/\bdelete\b/.test(btn.className))) {
    btn = btn.parentNode;
    if (btn === this) {
      btn = null;
    }
  }
  if (btn) {
    this.removeChild(btn.parentNode);
  }
}

<ul id="the-list"></ul>

Answer 2

function registerClickHandler () {
    var x = document.querySelectorAll(".image");
    for(var i = 0; i < x.length; i++) {
       x[i].querySelector(".remove").onclick = function(){
           this.parentNode.parentNode.removeChild(this.parentNode);
    };
}