How do you convert a jQuery object into a string?
No need to clone and add to the DOM to use .html(), you can do:
$('#item-of-interest').wrap('<div></div>').html()
I assume you're asking for the full HTML string. If that's the case, something like this will do the trick:
$('<div>').append($('#item-of-interest').clone()).html();
This is explained in more depth here, but essentially you make a new node to wrap the item of interest, do the manipulations, remove it, and grab the HTML.
If you're just after a string representation, then go with new String(obj)
.
I wrote the original answer in 2009. As of 2014, most major browsers now support outerHTML
as a native property (see, for example, Firefox and Internet Explorer), so you can do:
$('#item-of-interest').prop('outerHTML');
The best way to find out what properties and methods are available to an HTML node (object) is to do something like:
console.log($("#my-node"));
From jQuery 1.6+ you can just use outerHTML to include the HTML tags in your string output:
var node = $("#my-node").outerHTML;
It may be possible to use the jQuery.makeArray(obj)
utility function:
var obj = $('<p />',{'class':'className'}).html('peekaboo');
var objArr = $.makeArray(obj);
var plainText = objArr[0];
new String(myobj)
If you want to serialize the whole object to string, use JSON.
This seems to work fine for me:
$("#id")[0].outerHTML