Changing content in a div with JS without destroying its content

Question

I am using an application where on change in the select box value my javascript function would be called. In the function I have an if/else statement. If the condition validates, it displays me a graph in my div , else it displays text in the same div .

var arrayDataSource = [];
//for example this array has the following [[1,0.2],[2,0],[3,1]
$.each(test, function(index, value) 
{
    //code to load data to that array
});
)
if(arrayDataSource.length > 0) {
    //draw graph
} else {
    document.getElementById('mydiv').innerHTML = "some text";
}

When I try to run the else condition my content gets overwritten as I am using an innerHTML to display text.

Do I have any other options to display text with javascript without using innerHTML ? I have also seen some DOM functions and other relevant posts but nothing worked for me. My div properties should remain as they are even after the else condition.

Answer 1

Use insertAdjacentHTML instead of innerHTML as it does not reparse the element it is being used on and thus it does not corrupt the existing elements inside the element.

document.getElementById('overAllContainer').insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', 'some text');

A better way to do it would be to append a new element with an attribute such as a class or an id to your overAllContainer in order to easily remove it when your selection changes. You can do it via

document.getElementById('overAllContainer').insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', '<p class="message">some text</p>');

Or via

var message = document.createElement('p');
message.setAttribute('class', 'message');
message.innerText = 'some text';
document.getElementById('overAllContainer').appendChild(message);

And then when you want to remove the message based on the selection changing,

document.querySelector('#overAllContainer .message').remove();

Answer 2

Changing content in a div with JS without destroying its content you can simply use +=; instead of = only.

The code will be document.getElementById('overAllContainer').innerHTML += "some text";

Answer 3

Use document.createTextNode :

var text = document.createTextNode("some text");
document.getElementById('mydiv').appendChild(text);