39

I am going to get a element from a html-string with jQuery, but I always get an undefined in my console. My String is:

<td class="test">asd</td><td class="second">fgh</td><td class="last">jkl</td>

and I want to get the td.test.

I've tested:

console.log($('.test', '<td class="test">asd</td><td class="second">fgh</td><td class="last">jkl</td>').innerHTML);
console.log($('.test', '<td class="test">asd</td><td class="second">fgh</td><td class="last">jkl</td>').html());
console.log($('.test', '<td class="test">asd</td><td class="second">fgh</td><td class="last">jkl</td>').first().innerHTML);

and some more, but nothing works :/

Does anyone know a solution for my problem?

2
  • Maybe you should wrap your string with jQuery first? Commented Mar 4, 2012 at 0:37
  • 4
    Can you show me where it's documented that jQuery should be able to accept arbitrary HTML as the second argument to $? Commented Mar 4, 2012 at 0:38

4 Answers 4

63

First, use jQuery.parseHTML to parse the HTML into an array of elements; then you’ll be able to convert it to a jQuery collection and use filter to restrict the collection to elements matching a selector.

var html =
    '<td class="test">asd</td>' +
    '<td class="second">fgh</td>' +
    '<td class="last">jkl</td>';

var text = $($.parseHTML(html)).filter('.test').text();

console.log(text);
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

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

1 Comment

parseHTML is no longer necessary, it will work without it (jQuery > 3.5)
10

You can't use jQuery selectors on a collection of nodes like this. You can wrap in a single node to work around this, so just add e.g. a wrapping <tr> node.

var htmlBits = '<tr>'
  + '<td class="test">asd</td><td class="second">fgh</td><td class="last">jkl</td>'
  + '</tr>';

And then it will work:

console.log($('.test', htmlBits).text()); // outputs 'asd'

JSFiddle (remember to view the console to see the log).

Comments

4

Try:

console.log($('<td class="test">asd</td><td class="second">fgh</td><td class="last">jkl</td>').filter('.test').html());

or:

console.log($('.test', '<table><td class="test">asd</td><td class="second">fgh</td><td class="last">jkl</td></table>').html());

Comments

2

I have a response that is of the form:

<div>...
</div>

<div>...
</div>

<div>...
</div>

And @minitech 's method resulted in an array of HTML nodes in which the selector didn't work.

So I tried this and it worked out nice:

$.ajax({
    url:
    success: function($data) {
         var $parsed_data = $('<div/>').append($data);
         var found = $parsed_data.find(".Selector");
         ...
    }
});

Comments

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.