I'm trying to get the value of href from an anchor. The code looks like this
var html = "<a href='http://path/to/file.pdf'>File</a>";
alert(jQuery("a",html).attr("href"));
The only output I get is 'undefined'. I'm want to get "http://path/to/file.pdf".
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Try:
jQuery(html).attr('href');
Or if the <a> tag is deeper in the html than your example:
jQuery(html).find('a').attr('href');
The jQuery() function will convert HTML strings into DOM objects, and return a jQuery object containing them for you.
$(html) business works.
jQuery(html).get(0).href and use vanilla javascript.
To explain why your method doesn't work - when you do jQuery("a",html), you are searching for a elements inside the context of the element stored in html.
The only thing currently inside is the File text. If your string was wrapped in a div for example, it would work. <div><a href='...'>File</a></div>
I assume you have some other reason for creating a jQuery object. If not, and you don't want the extra overhead, you could use a regular expression.
Example: http://jsfiddle.net/e3Gyc/
var html = "<a href='http://path/to/file.pdf'>File</a>";
var result = html.match(/href='([^']+)'/)[1];
Otherwise the answers that gnarf and Dzida gave are excellent.
jQuery("a", html) not working is great... On the other you are gasp advocating parsing HTML with RegExp... Risky Move - +1 :)href is the only purpose. Not likely the case, though. Admittedly, the usefulness of this solution is narrow and fraught with peril. +1 backatcha.Your code should look like to make it works as you want:
var html = "<a href='http://path/to/file.pdf'>File</a>";
alert($(html).attr("href"))
