Converting HTML string into DOM elements?

Solution 1:

You can use a DOMParser, like so:

var xmlString = "<div id='foo'><a href='#'>Link</a><span></span></div>";
var doc = new DOMParser().parseFromString(xmlString, "text/xml");
console.log(doc.firstChild.innerHTML); // => <a href="#">Link...
console.log(doc.firstChild.firstChild.innerHTML); // => Link

Solution 2:

You typically create a temporary parent element to which you can write the innerHTML, then extract the contents:

var wrapper= document.createElement('div');
wrapper.innerHTML= '<div><a href="#"></a><span></span></div>';
var div= wrapper.firstChild;

If the element whose outer-HTML you've got is a simple <div> as here, this is easy. If it might be something else that can't go just anywhere, you might have more problems. For example if it were a <li>, you'd have to have the parent wrapper be a <ul>.

But IE can't write innerHTML on elements like <tr> so if you had a <td> you'd have to wrap the whole HTML string in <table><tbody><tr>...</tr></tbody></table>, write that to innerHTML and extricate the actual <td> you wanted from a couple of levels down.

Solution 3:

Why not use insertAdjacentHTML

for example:

// <div id="one">one</div> 
var d1 = document.getElementById('one'); 
d1.insertAdjacentHTML('afterend', '<div id="two">two</div>');

// At this point, the new structure is:
// <div id="one">one</div><div id="two">two</div>here

Solution 4:

Check out John Resig's pure JavaScript HTML parser.

EDIT: if you want the browser to parse the HTML for you, innerHTML is exactly what you want. From this SO question:

var tempDiv = document.createElement('div');
tempDiv.innerHTML = htmlString;

Solution 5:

Okay, I realized the answer myself, after I had to think about other people's answers. :P

var htmlContent = ... // a response via AJAX containing HTML
var e = document.createElement('div');
e.setAttribute('style', 'display: none;');
e.innerHTML = htmlContent;
document.body.appendChild(e);
var htmlConvertedIntoDom = e.lastChild.childNodes; // the HTML converted into a DOM element :), now let's remove the
document.body.removeChild(e);