Get selected element's outer HTML

Question

I\'m trying to get the HTML of a selected object with jQuery. I am aware of the .html() function; the issue is that I need the HTML including the selected obje

Answer 1

I have made this simple test with outerHTML being tokimon solution (without clone), and outerHTML2 being jessica solution (clone)

console.time("outerHTML");
for(i=0;i<1000;i++)
 {                 
  var html = $("").outerHTML();
 }                 
console.timeEnd("outerHTML");

console.time("outerHTML2");

 for(i=0;i<1000;i++)
 {                 
   var html = $("").outerHTML2();
  }                 
  console.timeEnd("outerHTML2");

and the result in my chromium (Version 20.0.1132.57 (0)) browser was

outerHTML: 81ms
outerHTML2: 439ms

but if we use tokimon solution without the native outerHTML function (which is now supported in probably almost every browser)

we get

outerHTML: 594ms
outerHTML2: 332ms

and there are gonna be more loops and elements in real world examples, so the perfect combination would be

$.fn.outerHTML = function() 
{
  $t = $(this);
  if( "outerHTML" in $t[0] ) return $t[0].outerHTML; 
  else return $t.clone().wrap('
').parent().html(); 
}

so clone method is actually faster than wrap/unwrap method
(jquery 1.7.2)