jQuery clone – Making a Copy of an Element

We can use the jQuery clone() method to copy an existing HTML element and add a copy of it to our HTML.

$("#div1").clone();

The jQuery clone() method would copy the div #div1 and any elements it contains.

If you are using WordPress, don’t forget to change the $ to jQuery as below:

jQuery("#div1").clone();

Let’s take a look at an example.

Let’s say we have the following HTML:

<div id="div1">
  <p class="p1">This is some text.</p>
</div>
<div id="click-me1" class="click-me">Clone and add text above</div>

Let’s say we want to copy the paragraph above and add it to the div. We can do this easily with the jQuery clone() method. We can also use the appendTo() method to then add the cloned paragraph to the div.

Here is the JavaScript code:

$("#click-me1").click(function(){
  //We only want to clone the first p, so we use :first
  var clonedP = $(".p1:first").clone();
  clonedP.appendTo("#div1");
});

Here is the final code and output for this example:

Code Output:

Full Code:

<div id="div1">
  <p class="p1">This is some text.</p>
</div>
<div id="click-me1" class="click-me">Clone and add text above</div>


<script>
$("#click-me1").click(function(){
  var clonedP = $(".p1:first").clone();
  clonedP.appendTo("#div1");
});
</script>

Let’s take a look at another example below.

Using the jQuery clone() Method to Create a Bunch of Divs

In this simple example, we will have a div that will be a box with a greenish background. We will provide a button for the user be able to clone this div, and add its clone right next to it. Here is the HTML setup:

<style>.box{ float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; background: #7bbfa2; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; }</style>
<div id="div2">
  <div class="box"></div>
</div><div class="clear"></div>
<div id="click-me2" class="click-me">Clone box</div>

In our function, we will clone the div, and then change its background color using the css() method.

We will finally add the new div using the appendTo() method like we did in the example above.

$("#click-me2").click(function(){
  var clonedP = $(".box:first").clone();
  //Create a random color
  var randomColor = "#" + (Math.floor(Math.random()*16777215).toString(16));
  //Give the new box a random background color
  clonedP.css("background",randomColor);
  clonedP.appendTo("#div2");
});

The final code and output for this example of using the jQuery clone() method to create a bunch of divs is below:

Code Output:

Full Code:

<style>.box{ float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; background: #7bbfa2; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; }</style>
<div id="div2">
  <div class="box"></div>
</div><div class="clear"></div>
<div id="click-me2" class="click-me">Clone box</div>

<script>
$("#click-me2").click(function(){
  var clonedP = $(".box:first").clone();
  var randomColor = "#" + (Math.floor(Math.random()*16777215).toString(16));
  clonedP.css("background",randomColor);
  clonedP.appendTo("#div2");
});
</script>

Hopefully this article has been useful for you to understand how to use the jQuery clone() method to make a copy of an element.