A JavaScript parser for DOM

Question

We have a special requirement in a project where we have to parse a string of HTML (from an AJAX response) client side via JavaScript only. Thats right

Answer 1

Since HTML essentially is XML you can use jquery parseXML

var dom = $.parseXML(html);

$('title', dom).text("This is a new Title");

Edit:

If you want to get it back into a string you will need to use the xml plugin, but I cannot find its original source so here it is:

/**
 * jQuery xml plugin
 * Converts XML node(s) to string 
 *
 * Copyright (c) 2009 Radim Svoboda
 * Dual licensed under the MIT (MIT-LICENSE.txt)
 * and GPL (GPL-LICENSE.txt) licenses.
 *
 * @author  Radim Svoboda, user Zzzzzz
 * @version 1.0.0
 */


/**
 * Converts XML node(s) to string using web-browser features.
 * Similar to .html() with HTML nodes 
 * This method is READ-ONLY.
 *  
 * @param all set to TRUE (1,"all",etc.) process all elements,
 * otherwise process content of the first matched element 
 *  
 * @return string obtained from XML node(s)  
 */         
jQuery.fn.xml = function(all) {

  //result to return
  var s = "";

   //Anything to process ?
   if( this.length )

    //"object" with nodes to convert to string  
   (
      ( ( typeof all != 'undefined' ) && all ) ?
      //all the nodes 
      this 
      :
      //content of the first matched element 
      jQuery(this[0]).contents()
    )
   //convert node(s) to string  
   .each(function(){
    s += window.ActiveXObject ?//==  IE browser ?
       //for IE
         this.xml
         :
         //for other browsers
         (new XMLSerializer()).serializeToString(this)
         ;
  }); 


  return    s;      

  };