IE8: empty() leaks children if they were attached via DocumentFragment

[simon@…]

empty() does not cleanly remove the children, which were attached via a DocumentFragment. The issue is a bug in IE8's (and below) Node.removeChild().

Running this fiddle in Sieve demonstrates the problem (IE8/sieve can't run jsfiddle, you have to create a local html):

Minimal test case: ​http://jsfiddle.net/cbQ2y/2/

• press the button
• see that in Sieve the 10 elements are still in memory ('orphaned') althought the container was emptied: ​http://i.imgur.com/q2rPcUW.png

The issue is resolved by using Node.removeNode(true). You can test the effect of removeNode in the fiddle by setting USE_DESTORY=true, reloading and pressing the button again (the elements no longer leak).

As this test case demonstrates, the issue can be resolved by using Node.removeNode(false) in IE8 instead of Node.removeChild; for example here: ​https://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/1.9-stable/src/manipulation.js#L195

Additionally, the dojo source documents this IE8- bug right here: ​https://github.com/dojo/dojo/blob/master/dom-construct.js#L329

[anonymous]

fiddle updated: ​http://jsfiddle.net/cbQ2y/3/

(i had a line too much in it from testing)

[dmethvin]

Reference: ​http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/ms536708(v=vs.85).aspx

We don't support document fragments as API inputs but it seems like this would occur for internal uses as well.

[simon@…]

I always assumed that's supported but a closer look at the API proves me wrong.

This seems to be a general IE bug and not at all related to jquery. I was able to reproduce the leaking behavior with an even simpler case:

for (var i = 0; i<10; i++) {
	var frag = document.createDocumentFragment();
	var div = document.createElement('div');
	frag.appendChild(div);
	frag = null;
}

the leak is closed if I explicitly call removeNode on the fragments children (after each iteration):

while (c = frag.lastChild) {
  c.removeNode(false)
}

[Timmy Willison]

#14214 is a duplicate of this ticket.

[m_gol]

Migrated to ​https://github.com/jquery/jquery/issues/1745