Extract the current DOM and print it as a string, with styles intact

Question

I\'d like to be able to take my DOM, as is, and convert it to a string. Let\'s say I open up the inspector and make a change to the margin-left property of a particular ele

Answer 1

I think this could be a solution (it took me nearly a whole day!).

It returns a string representing the DOM of any element, with all external styles included in the "style" attributes except default values, and does not permanently modify that element.

For example: console.log(document.body.serializeWithStyles());

You can load this code in Web Inspector command line or from a script tag in the body element but NOT in the head element because it requires the existence of document.body.

I have tested it on desktop Safari 5 (I don't have the mobile version).

It works like this:

For each element in the DOM:
1) caching the value of style.cssText property, which represents the inline style, in an array;
2) calling getComputedStyle on the element;
3) checking if we have the css default values lookup table corresponding to this element's tag name;
4) building it if not;
5) iterating through the result, finding which values are non default using the lookup table;
6) applying those non default style values to the element.
Then storing the outerHTML as the result;
For each element, restoring the inline styles from the cache;
Returning the previously stored result.

The code:

Element.prototype.serializeWithStyles = (function () {  

    // Mapping between tag names and css default values lookup tables. This allows to exclude default values in the result.
    var defaultStylesByTagName = {};

    // Styles inherited from style sheets will not be rendered for elements with these tag names
    var noStyleTags = {"BASE":true,"HEAD":true,"HTML":true,"META":true,"NOFRAME":true,"NOSCRIPT":true,"PARAM":true,"SCRIPT":true,"STYLE":true,"TITLE":true};

    // This list determines which css default values lookup tables are precomputed at load time
    // Lookup tables for other tag names will be automatically built at runtime if needed
    var tagNames = ["A","ABBR","ADDRESS","AREA","ARTICLE","ASIDE","AUDIO","B","BASE","BDI","BDO","BLOCKQUOTE","BODY","BR","BUTTON","CANVAS","CAPTION","CENTER","CITE","CODE","COL","COLGROUP","COMMAND","DATALIST","DD","DEL","DETAILS","DFN","DIV","DL","DT","EM","EMBED","FIELDSET","FIGCAPTION","FIGURE","FONT","FOOTER","FORM","H1","H2","H3","H4","H5","H6","HEAD","HEADER","HGROUP","HR","HTML","I","IFRAME","IMG","INPUT","INS","KBD","KEYGEN","LABEL","LEGEND","LI","LINK","MAP","MARK","MATH","MENU","META","METER","NAV","NOBR","NOSCRIPT","OBJECT","OL","OPTION","OPTGROUP","OUTPUT","P","PARAM","PRE","PROGRESS","Q","RP","RT","RUBY","S","SAMP","SCRIPT","SECTION","SELECT","SMALL","SOURCE","SPAN","STRONG","STYLE","SUB","SUMMARY","SUP","SVG","TABLE","TBODY","TD","TEXTAREA","TFOOT","TH","THEAD","TIME","TITLE","TR","TRACK","U","UL","VAR","VIDEO","WBR"];

    // Precompute the lookup tables.
    for (var i = 0; i < tagNames.length; i++) {
        if(!noStyleTags[tagNames[i]]) {
            defaultStylesByTagName[tagNames[i]] = computeDefaultStyleByTagName(tagNames[i]);
        }
    }

    function computeDefaultStyleByTagName(tagName) {
        var defaultStyle = {};
        var element = document.body.appendChild(document.createElement(tagName));
        var computedStyle = getComputedStyle(element);
        for (var i = 0; i < computedStyle.length; i++) {
            defaultStyle[computedStyle[i]] = computedStyle[computedStyle[i]];
        }
        document.body.removeChild(element); 
        return defaultStyle;
    }

    function getDefaultStyleByTagName(tagName) {
        tagName = tagName.toUpperCase();
        if (!defaultStylesByTagName[tagName]) {
            defaultStylesByTagName[tagName] = computeDefaultStyleByTagName(tagName);
        }
        return defaultStylesByTagName[tagName];
    }

    return function serializeWithStyles() {
        if (this.nodeType !== Node.ELEMENT_NODE) { throw new TypeError(); }
        var cssTexts = [];
        var elements = this.querySelectorAll("*");
        for ( var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++ ) {
            var e = elements[i];
            if (!noStyleTags[e.tagName]) {
                var computedStyle = getComputedStyle(e);
                var defaultStyle = getDefaultStyleByTagName(e.tagName);
                cssTexts[i] = e.style.cssText;
                for (var ii = 0; ii < computedStyle.length; ii++) {
                    var cssPropName = computedStyle[ii];
                    if (computedStyle[cssPropName] !== defaultStyle[cssPropName]) {
                        e.style[cssPropName] = computedStyle[cssPropName];
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        var result = this.outerHTML;
        for ( var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++ ) {
            elements[i].style.cssText = cssTexts[i];
        }
        return result;
    }
})();