Get the string representation of a DOM node

Question

Javascript: I have the DOM representation of a node (element or document) and I'm looking for the string representation of it. E.g.,

var el = document.createElement("p");
el.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Test"));

should yield:

get_string(el) == "<p>Test</p>";

I have the strong feeling, that I'm missing something trivially simple, but I just don't find a method that works in IE, FF, Safari and Opera. Therefore, outerHTML is no option.

Answer 1

I have wasted a lot of time figuring out what is wrong when I iterate through DOMElements with the code in the accepted answer. This is what worked for me, otherwise every second element disappears from the document:

_getGpxString: function(node) {
          clone = node.cloneNode(true);
          var tmp = document.createElement("div");
          tmp.appendChild(clone);
          return tmp.innerHTML;
        },

Answer 2

Try

new XMLSerializer().serializeToString(element);

Answer 3

What you're looking for is 'outerHTML', but wee need a fallback coz it's not compatible with old browsers.

var getString = (function() {
  var DIV = document.createElement("div");

  if ('outerHTML' in DIV)
    return function(node) {
      return node.outerHTML;
    };

  return function(node) {
    var div = DIV.cloneNode();
    div.appendChild(node.cloneNode(true));
    return div.innerHTML;
  };

})();

// getString(el) == "<p>Test</p>"

You'll find my jQuery plugin here: Get selected element's outer HTML

Answer 4

Use Element#outerHTML:

var el = document.createElement("p");
el.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Test"));

console.log(el.outerHTML);

It can also be used to write DOM elements. From Mozilla's documentation:

The outerHTML attribute of the element DOM interface gets the serialized HTML fragment describing the element including its descendants. It can be set to replace the element with nodes parsed from the given string.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/outerHTML

Answer 5

If your element has parent

element.parentElement.innerHTML

Answer 6

I've found that for my use-cases I don't always want the entire outerHTML. Many nodes just have too many children to show.

Here's a function (minimally tested in Chrome):

/**
 * Stringifies a DOM node.
 * @param {Object} el - A DOM node.
 * @param {Number} truncate - How much to truncate innerHTML of element.
 * @returns {String} - A stringified node with attributes
 *                     retained.
 */
function stringifyEl(el, truncate) {
    var truncateLen = truncate || 50;
    var outerHTML = el.outerHTML;
    var ret = outerHTML;
    ret = ret.substring(0, truncateLen);

    // If we've truncated, add an elipsis.
    if (outerHTML.length > truncateLen) {
      ret += "...";
    }
    return ret;
}

https://gist.github.com/kahunacohen/467f5cc259b5d4a85eb201518dcb15ec