JSON serialize a DOM element

Question

If I do:

var el =
{
   o : document.createElement(\"iframe\")
}

var fs = JSON.stringify(el);

and then I try to access with

var ofs = JSON.parse(fs);
         


        

Answer 1

Building on Alain's prototypejs code, I've updated it using underscore and jQuery, also put into a gist here

function elementToObject(element, recurse) {
    var el = $(element),
        o = {
            tagName: el[0].tagName
        };

    _.each(el[0].attributes, function(attribute){
        o[attribute.name] = attribute.value;
    });

    if (recurse) {
        o.children = _.map(el.children(), function(child){
            return this.elementToObject(child, true);
        }, this);
    }
    return  o;
}