why does jquery .text() always return an empty string?

Question

I have a simple $.ajax call that returns a response that looks like this:

<div id='type'>success</div>
<div id="graph"></div>
<script type='text/javascript'>
   //some script that manipulates the graph div
</script>

and on my .ajax's success(response) function, I have:

$(response).find('#type').text()

my problem is that it always returns null if I use .html()

and 'an empty string' when i use .text();

Is there something wrong with my syntax?

also previously, the div#type was a 'p#type' but still it returns the same result as it is now. — lock
– lock, Commented Sep 6, 2010 at 0:02
did you try this $("#type", response).text() not sure though if that will work — Umair A.
– Umair A., Commented Sep 6, 2010 at 0:06
@rob: well i did try that a while ago but its not how im supposed to do it, coz the purpose of retrieving that div's value is so that i could decide if i must insert it to the DOM or not — lock
– lock, Commented Sep 6, 2010 at 0:13
@Rob - You don't need do to that, $(response) creates a document fragment, which is traversable and much faster to deal with as well :) — Nick Craver
– Nick Craver, Commented Sep 6, 2010 at 0:15

BoltClock · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-14 07:14:33Z

9

It's because it's at the root level of the response, so .find() won't work (because it's not a descendant), you need .filter(), like this:

$(response).filter('#type').text()

edited Jul 14, 2012 at 7:14

BoltClock

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answered Sep 6, 2010 at 0:09

Nick Craver

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Comments

BoltClock · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-06 00:08:43Z

3

Your response HTML needs to have a root element so that it can find() elements, because find() searches descendants of a DOM element. You can achieve this by adding the response to the document's DOM, or to another jQuery DOM element.

You can also do this and it'll work as well:

$('<div>' + response + '</div>').find('#type').text();

answered Sep 6, 2010 at 0:08

BoltClock

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andres descalzo · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-06 00:12:41Z

1

here you can test your code should work fine. you have to have a problem in ajax, try with "alert" to "response" to see what response you get

test

answered Sep 6, 2010 at 0:12

andres descalzo

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2 Comments

Nick Craver Over a year ago

It's worth noting that this test isn't valid, doing a .find() on a document fragment created from an AJAX response is very different than doing a document.getElementById() already in the DOM.

andres descalzo Over a year ago

Is very very very different?, In the case of putting the response into a div, var newres = $ ('<div>' + response + '</ div >'); work well, I understand your explanation, but not so strictly applied in this case.

Iain · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-06 00:05:05Z

0

It cant be something as simple as the single quotes around the id in the type div can it?

(the html, not the js)

answered Sep 6, 2010 at 0:05

Iain

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1 Comment

Nick Craver Over a year ago

Single or double quotes are interchangeable here, as long as they're matched :)

Z. Zlatev · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-06 00:07:21Z

0

In your $.ajax() request, set dataType as html

answered Sep 6, 2010 at 0:07

Z. Zlatev

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