I would like to convert a html element created from a string back to the string after some modifications. But I get an empty string instead.
$('<iframe width="854" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gYKqrjq5IjU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>').html();
How can I do that another way?
You can do this:
var $html = $('<iframe width="854" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gYKqrjq5IjU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>');
var str = $html.prop('outerHTML');
console.log(str);<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.2.1/jquery.min.js"></script>What you want is the outer HTML, not the inner HTML :
$('<some element/>')[0].outerHTML;
$('<some element/>').prop('outerHTML')(document.body.outerHTML).constructor will return String. (take off .constructor and that's your string)
That aughta do it :)
Try a slight different approach:
//set string and append it as object
var myHtmlString = '<iframe id="myFrame" width="854" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gYKqrjq5IjU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>';
$('body').append(myHtmlString);
//as you noticed you can't just get it back
var myHtmlStringBack = $('#myFrame').html();
alert(myHtmlStringBack); // will be empty (a bug in jquery?) but...
//since an id was added to your iframe so you can retrieve its attributes back...
var width = $('#myFrame').attr('width');
var height = $('#myFrame').attr('height');
var src = $('#myFrame').attr('src');
var myReconstructedString = '<iframe id="myFrame" width="'+ width +'" height="'+ height +'" src="'+ src+'" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>';
alert(myReconstructedString);
you can just wrap it into another element and call html after that:
$('<div><iframe width="854" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gYKqrjq5IjU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>').html();
note that outerHTML doesn't exist on older browsers but innerHTML still does (it doesn't exist for example in ff < 11 while it's still used on many older computers)
