Exploring the HTML Tables API for Programmatic Table Manipulation
By
begoon
Right out the toaster. Reliable, with some real depth.
Summary
The article discusses a lesser-known HTML tables API that provides programmatic methods for creating and manipulating tables without using DOM methods or innerHTML. It explains how developers can use this API to loop over tables, create bodies, rows, cells, headers, footers, captions, and summaries, all while avoiding security concerns and performance issues associated with re-rendering entire tables on each change.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledWhen people turn data into HTML tables using JavaScript, they either use the DOM methods (createElement() and the likes), but most of the time just append a huge string and use innerHTML, which always is a security concern.
However, did you know that HTML tables also have an old, forgotten API?
Using this one, you can loop over tables, create bodies, rows, cells, heads, footers, captions and summaries (yes, HTML tables have all of those) and access the table cells.
Without having to re-render the whole table on each change.
Article URL: https://christianheilmann.com/2025/10/08/abandonware-of-the-web-do-you-know-that-there-is-an-html-tables-api/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45781293
Points: 18
# Comments: 12
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