Get HTML String for jQuery and/or DOM object

Question

I think I've read through the complete jQuery API documentation and looked at jQuery objects and simple DOM elements in the debugger to check what methods they actually have at runtime, but for the life of me, I can't find a way to get the html string that represents the contents of a jQuery object or a DOM Node. Am I missing something?

jQuery objects have the method html(), DOM elements have the property innerHTML but both only give the inner html of the object. So if I have HTML like this:

<body>
    <div>
        <p>Hello World!</p>
    </div>
</body>

And I use jQuery doing something like this var $div = $body.find("div") and I then call $div.html() the returned string is "<p>Hello World!</p>". But I'm looking for a way to make it return "<div><p>Hello World!</p></div>" (I don't care about the whitespace).

What am I doing wrong? It can't be that difficult to get the html representation of these objects, can it?

possible duplicate of How to get the innerHtml, including the tag, using jQuery? — epascarello
– epascarello, Commented May 9, 2013 at 16:42

Colleen · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-09 16:43:02Z

8

try the dom property .outerHTML

answered May 9, 2013 at 16:43

Colleen

25.8k12 gold badges48 silver badges75 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

vinczemarton Over a year ago

I remembered this as a non-standard IE specific thing, but it seems to be widely adopted by now.

Nate · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-09 16:46:35Z

2

You can use the '.outerHTML' property. This is how it would look using jquery: http://jsfiddle.net/MHvmm/

$('div')[0].outerHTML

answered May 9, 2013 at 16:46

Nate

6614 silver badges7 bronze badges

Comments

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:25:39Z

0

This is possible by enclosing your desired object in another object, and the fetching the innerHTML. It is explained in much more detail here: How do you convert a jQuery object into a string?

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:25

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered May 9, 2013 at 16:48

Jan

2301 gold badge2 silver badges8 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Get HTML String for jQuery and/or DOM object

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related