140

can I convert a string to a html object? like:

string s = '<div id="myDiv"></div>';
var htmlObject = s.toHtmlObject;

so that i can later on get it by id and do some changing in its style

var ho = document.getElementById("myDiv").style.marginTop = something;

Thanx a million in advance, Lina

1

5 Answers 5

144
var s = '<div id="myDiv"></div>';
var htmlObject = document.createElement('div');
htmlObject.innerHTML = s;
htmlObject.getElementById("myDiv").style.marginTop = something;
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3 Comments

Yep, or just htmlObject.firstChild since you know that's where it'll always be.
This is not exactly correct, because you can not call getElementById on created htmlObject instance.
you could append the htmlObject to a document fragment in order to use getElementById, like var fragment = document.createDocumentFragment(); fragment.appendChild( htmlObject ); fragment.getElementById("myDiv").style.marginTop = something;
64

You cannot do it with just method, unless you use some javascript framework like jquery which supports it ..

string s = '<div id="myDiv"></div>'
var htmlObject = $(s); // jquery call

but still, it would not be found by the getElementById because for that to work the element must be in the DOM... just creating in the memory does not insert it in the dom.

You would need to use append or appendTo or after etc.. to put it in the dom first..

Of'course all these can be done through regular javascript but it would take more steps to accomplish the same thing... and the logic is the same in both cases..

4 Comments

jQuery is cool but it's only JavaScript
nice approach :) so i can write $(s).css("margin-top") to get the top margin and then modify it and write it to the page... I LOVE this answer :D
glad you like it Lina :) I think that size/properties would not be getable before inserting it to the DOM.. It makes sense, because an element would be influenced by where in the DOM it gets inserted.. but the reference to the object is still valid, so once you insert it in the DOM you can query its size properties like width/height/margins etc..
Please remove that part that says "you can only do it with jquery". that is plain wrong.
57

Had the same issue. I used a dirty trick like so:

var s = '<div id="myDiv"></div>';
var temp = document.createElement('div');
temp.innerHTML = s;
var htmlObject = temp.firstChild;

Now, you can add styles the way you like:

htmlObject.style.marginTop = something;

4 Comments

What if string is '<div id="myDiv"></div>more text'? It will return only <div id="myDiv"></div>
@user7331530 That's because more text is the second child. If you want everything, use temp. If you want more text, use temp.childNodes[1].
it wont work if you try to parse something like <thead>...</thead> because thead is not allowed inside a div
Note to those using this method, if you've created a multi-line string template, it's possible the first child will be a text node (white space at start of string). You may need to test/iterate to get the actual element.
5

In addition to Gaby aka's method, we can find elements inside htmlObject in this way -

htmlObj.find("#box").html();

Fiddle is available here - http://jsfiddle.net/ashwyn/76gL3/

1 Comment

Yes this worked
1

If the browser that you are planning to use is Mozilla (Addon development) (not sure of chrome) you can use the following method in Javascript

function DOM( string )
{
    var {Cc, Ci} = require("chrome");
    var parser = Cc["@mozilla.org/xmlextras/domparser;1"].createInstance(Ci.nsIDOMParser);
    console.log("PARSING OF DOM COMPLETED ...");
    return (parser.parseFromString(string, "text/html"));
};

Hope this helps

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