Web development

Table of contents in Javascript

In this post, I will provide you with a javascript code sample that transforms headings in a page into a structured table of contents with anchor links.

When writing a long structured article, it is always handy for your readers having a table of contents that helps them navigate through it. I composed a javascript code sample that creates such a table of contents on the fly for you. It iterates through the article headings and

creates anchors for each of them and
renders a structured unordered list with anchor links.

Here is a link to a working demo on Codepen.

How to make it work?

In your markup, create an empty ul element (i.e. <ul class="table-of-contents"></ul>) that will stand for the table of contents.
Copy the Javascript code from the pen or code block below into your project. I wrote the code in ES6 so that you may need to transpile it into ES5 in case you need to use the functionality on the client side. Babel could be a great choice.
When calling the tableOfContents function, pass the settings object with selectors for
- the headings you want to be part of the table of contents (headingsSelector property) and
- the table of contents wrapper you've created in the first step (wrapperSelector property).

The code

Working demo on Codepen

const tableOfContents = (settings) => {
  // Helper function that iterates all headings and returns the highest level.
  // For example, if array of  h2, h3 and h4 is passed, the function returns 2.
  const getHighestHIndex = headings => {
    let indexes = Array.from(headings).map(item => {
      return parseInt(item.tagName.replace('H', ''));
    });
    return indexes.reduce((a, b) => { 
      return Math.min(a, b);
    });
  };

  // Iterates passed headings, gets their inner HTML and transforms it into id
  const createAnchors = (settings) => {
    let headings = document.querySelectorAll(settings.headingsSelector);
    headings.forEach(item => {
      let anchorName = item.innerHTML.toLowerCase().replace(/(<([^>]+)>)/ig,'').replace(/\W/g,'-');
      item.setAttribute('id', anchorName);
    });
  };

  // Iterates passed headings and creates unordered list with anchor links reflecting heading levels
  const createTableOfContents = (settings) => {
    let headings = document.querySelectorAll(settings.headingsSelector);
    let tableOfContentsWrapper = document.querySelector(settings.wrapperSelector);
    let tableOfContents = '';
    let prevHeadingLevel = getHighestHIndex(headings);
    headings.forEach(item => {
      let headingLevel = parseInt(item.tagName.replace('H', ''));
      if (prevHeadingLevel > headingLevel) {
        tableOfContents += '</ul>';
      }
      if (prevHeadingLevel < headingLevel) {
        tableOfContents += '<ul>';
      }
      tableOfContents += `<li><a href="#${item.getAttribute('id')}">${item.innerHTML}</a></li>`;
      prevHeadingLevel = headingLevel;
    });
    tableOfContentsWrapper.innerHTML = tableOfContents;
  };
  
  createAnchors(settings);
  createTableOfContents(settings);
};

// Init table of contents
tableOfContents({
  headingsSelector: 'h2:not(.do-not-render), h3, h4',
  wrapperSelector: '.table-of-contents'
});

About the author

Milan Lund is a freelance web developer with expertise in Kentico. He specializes in building and maintaining websites on the Kentico platform. Milan writes articles based on his project experiences to assist both his future self and other developers.

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