--- title: Abandonware of the web: do you know that there is an... description: HTML tables have a native JavaScript API that allows programmatic creation and manipulation of table elements without re-rendering the entire table. The API... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/abandonware-of-the-web-do-you-know-that-there-is-an-html-tables-api--ndvirq8qz twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Abandonware of the web: do you know that there is an HTML tables API? | daily.dev og:description: HTML tables have a native JavaScript API that allows programmatic creation and manipulation of table elements without re-rendering the entire table. The API... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/abandonware-of-the-web-do-you-know-that-there-is-an-html-tables-api--ndvirq8qz og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ndvIRq8Qz.png og:image:alt: Abandonware of the web: do you know that there is an HTML tables API? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Abandonware of the web: do you know that there is an HTML tables API? **[Christian Heilmann](https://daily.dev/sources/christianheilmann)** · 2 min read · 33 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary HTML tables have a native JavaScript API that allows programmatic creation and manipulation of table elements without re-rendering the entire table. The API provides methods like insertRow() and insertCell() to build tables from data structures, and allows direct access to cells using array-like indexing. While the API has some quirks and limitations (like using -1 to append rows and no native TH element creation), it offers a more secure alternative to innerHTML string concatenation and could benefit from modernization similar to recent HTML form enhancements. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@raflie** · 1 upvotes > commenting for higher reach, i didnt know this is a thing and i agree, we need to have one more JS library building on top of the table API 🤣 ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Element: setHTML\(\) method - Web APIs](https://daily.dev/posts/element-sethtml-method---web-apis-alvm8fbaf) · Lobsters · 47 upvotes · 3 comments --- Tags: [#webdev](https://daily.dev/tags/webdev), [#javascript](https://daily.dev/tags/javascript), [#html](https://daily.dev/tags/html), [#dom](https://daily.dev/tags/dom) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/abandonware-of-the-web-do-you-know-that-there-is-an-html-tables-api--ndvirq8qz) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Abandonware of the web: do you know that there is an HTML tables API?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/abandonware-of-the-web-do-you-know-that-there-is-an-html-tables-api--ndvirq8qz","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/abandonware-of-the-web-do-you-know-that-there-is-an-html-tables-api--ndvirq8qz"},"datePublished":"2025-10-08T14:09:06.435Z","dateModified":"2025-10-08T14:09:26.679Z","description":"HTML tables have a native JavaScript API that allows programmatic creation and manipulation of table elements without re-rendering the entire table. 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