Replace entire HTML document in-place

I'm trying to avoid using a data URI because I do not want the generated document to be stored in the browser's history. Is it possible to replace the entire HTML document in-place?

I tried jQuery("html").html("<html>....</html>"), but the style information does not survive.

Solution 1:

You probably want to do this:

jQuery("body").html("new content");

...where "new content" would ideally only include the markup that would normally appear within the body element and not the rest. That will replace the body element's contents, whilst leaving anything you have in head (like style sheet information) alone. If you also want to update the title, you can do that via document.title = "new title";

Edit I got to wondering about replacing everything inside the html element, whether that would work, and what would happen. So I did this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8">
<title>Test Page</title>
<style type='text/css'>
body {
    font-family: sans-serif;
    font-weight: bold;
    color:       blue;
}
</style>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js'></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
(function() {
    $(document).ready(pageInit);
    function pageInit() {
        $('#btnChange').live('click', changePage);
        $('#btnHiThere').live('click', sayHi);
    }

    function changePage() {
        $('html').html(
            "<head><\/head>" +
            "<body>" +
            "<input type='button' id='btnHiThere' value='Click for Alert'>" +
            "<p>Note how this text now looks.<\/p>" +
            "<\/body>"
        );
    }

    function sayHi() {
        alert("Hi there");
    }
})();
</script>
</head>
<body>
<input type='button' id='btnHiThere' value='Click for Alert'>
<input type='button' id='btnChange' value='Change Page'>
<p>Note now this text current appears in a sans-serif, bold, blue font.</p>
</body>
</html>

And the results were quite interesting — I end up with a DOM structure that doesn't have a head or body at all, just html with the descendants of head and body inside. This is probably what's messing up the (new) styling in the new content. I get essentially the same result setting innerHTML directly (which may be why it doesn't work in jQuery; jQuery uses innerHTML when it can, although it's very sophisticated about not doing so when it can't); whereas if I do something similar by explicitly creating the head and body elements via document.createElement and document.appendChild, it works.

All of which almost certainly means this is more effort than it's worth.

But: Note that changing the content of the head and body elements seems to work just fine:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8">
<title>Test Page</title>
<style type='text/css'>
body {
    font-family: sans-serif;
    font-weight: bold;
    color:       blue;
}
</style>
<script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js'></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
(function() {
    $(document).ready(pageInit);
    function pageInit() {
        $('#btnChange').live('click', changePage);
        $('#btnHiThere').live('click', sayHi);
    }

    function changePage() {
        $('head').html(
            "<style type='text/css'>\n" +
            "body { color: green; }\n" +
            "<\/style>\n"
        );
        $('body').html(
            "<input type='button' id='btnHiThere' value='Click for Alert'>" +
            "<p>Note how this text now looks.<\/p>"
        );
    }

    function sayHi() {
        alert("Hi there");
    }
})();
</script>
</head>
<body>
<input type='button' id='btnHiThere' value='Click for Alert'>
<input type='button' id='btnChange' value='Change Page'>
<p>Note now this text current appears in a sans-serif, bold, blue font.</p>
</body>
</html>

So if you separate the "page" you're loading into head and body parts, you can easily update it in place.

Solution 2:

No jquery:

var newString = [
      "<!doctype html>"
    , "<html>"
    , "<head>"
    , "</head>"
    , "<body>"
    , "<h1>new content</h1>"
    , "</body>"
    , "</html>"
].join("");

document.getElementById('myIframeId').contentDocument.documentElement.outerHTML = newString;

Replace entire HTML document in-place

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

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