get html element as a string

Question

Possible Duplicate:
jQuery, get html of a whole element

lets say I have:

<span>my span</span>

I would like have html as a string of this span

I use:

var mySpan = $('span');

what to do with the mySpan var to have as a result string "<span>my span</span>"

thanks for any help

Igor Shastin · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-27T01:28:43.643

10

I think this will help: http://jsfiddle.net/HxU7B/2/.

UPDATE.

mySpan[0].outerHTML will take a previoulsy selected node and get a native outerHTML property. Since old Firefox versions doesn't have that property, we can use a bit of hack to get html - simply clone node to dummy div and then get this div's innerHTML: $('<div/>').append(mySpan.clone()).html()

edited Sep 27 '12 at 01:28

answered Sep 27 '12 at 01:18

Igor Shastin

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psst. Igor, you will have better luck if you explain yourself, or post code in your answer. – Fresheyeball Sep 27 '12 at 01:23
@Fresheyeball No problem, sir :) I've slightly updated my post. – Igor Shastin Sep 27 '12 at 01:28

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 27 '12 at 01:16

2

jQuery can't do that, but regular JavaScript DOM objects can:

var mySpanString = $('span').get(0).outerHTML;

answered Sep 27 '12 at 01:16

Joe Coder

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'jQuery can't do that' -1 this is just wrong! – Eli Sep 27 '12 at 01:44
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Oh yeah? Show me how to do it in jQuery without creating superfluous wrapper elements. There is no way, you are wrong. – Joe Coder Sep 27 '12 at 02:34

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 27 '12 at 02:26

0

As others have stated, you could use outerHTML or clone -> append -> html()

But here is another way to do it,

var nodeName = mySpan[0].nodeName.toLowerCase();
var outerHtml = "<"+nodeName +">"+mySpan.html()+"</"+nodeName +">";

answered Sep 27 '12 at 02:26

prashanth

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get html element as a string

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