Use Jquery Selectors on $.AJAX loaded HTML?

Question

I have

$.ajax({
  url: identity,
  success: function(data) { ProcessIdentityServer(data) }
});

When \'data\' is returned, is there a way to

Answer 1

This is the same as the accepted answer but with some extra explanation.

You may use the jQuery context parameter Link to docs

I can't really explain better than the documentation.

Selector Context

By default, selectors perform their searches within the DOM starting at the document root. However, an alternate context can be given for the search by using the optional second parameter to the $() function

The context parameter has been around since jQuery v1.0

Therefore a solution to the OP's example to "get all the href values of any LINK tags contained in the HTML held in 'data' without adding it to the DOM first" would be:

success: function(data){
    $("a", data).each(function(){
        console.log( $(this).attr("href") );
    });
}