How do I convert a HTML table object to a string?

Question

I am scraping some HTML off a webpage and I'm trying to scrape off a table element off the page and convert it to JSON.

I found a node js library that does this but it requires a string as an argument. How do I turn the HTML object into a string? When I call the toString() function on it, it returns:

"[object HTMLTableElement]"

My code is :

let data = await page.evaluate(() => {
    componentTable = document.querySelector('table.xs-col-12');
    componentTable = componentTable.toString()
    return{
        componentTable
    }
})
console.log(data)

probably you need `innerHTML` property – Iłya Bursov Aug 24 '20 at 19:09 — Iłya Bursov, Aug 24 '20 at 19:09
I'd recommend outerHTML to get the whole table – ControlAltDel Aug 24 '20 at 19:12 — ControlAltDel, Aug 24 '20 at 19:12

PeterKA · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-25T02:25:35.257

3

To get all the HTML - including the element in question - as a string change:

componentTable.toString()

To:

componentTable.outerHTML

edited Aug 25 '20 at 02:25

answered Aug 24 '20 at 19:14

PeterKA

24,158
5
26
48

can get this result in jquery not javascript? – Dmitriy Gusev Aug 25 '20 at 02:27
How about `$('
').append( componentTable ).html()`? See [jQuery: outer html](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5744207/jquery-outer-html) – PeterKA Aug 25 '20 at 13:27

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 24 '20 at 19:12

Just converting a HTMLElement to a string with toString() will give the object name, like you have seen.

You probably want to use innerHTML

return componentTable.innerHTML will give you a string of the html that is in that table, which depending on the node library you have found, may or may not be sufficient.

It's worth looking through the docs of that library, as they probably have an example for doing this.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 24 '20 at 19:22

0

you want to use innerHtml, that is the key

answered Aug 24 '20 at 19:22

Chris Brampton

1

How do I convert a HTML table object to a string?

3 Answers3