Checking if node exists in Javascript

Question

Here's the deal - I've got a load of elements on a page, and I'm using Javascript to remove some of them (this.parentNode.removeChild(this)) which is working great. However, if I have a variable referring to this node, then remove the node, the variable does NOT lose it's value! But if I then try and perform some other actions on this element, I get errors!

Example:

var element = document.getElementById('ooolookatmeimanelement');
element.parentNode.removeChild(element);
alert(element);

I still get "[Object HTMLblahblahblah]" in the alert, rather than null or undefined - anyone got any ideas how I can check to see if the node has been removed? It's probably something really simple that I'm oblivious to!

Answer 1

If you remove the node, remove the references too. E.g. in your code, assign null to element:

element = null;

Or if this is not possible, you can always check the value of parentNode. It should give null if the element is not part of the DOM:

if(element.parentNode === null) {
    // element is not part of the DOM
}

But this does not make much sense to me (might depend on the context though): If you removed an element, then you know that you have removed it. Why would you do any further operations on it?