Remove an attribute from a blob of HTML with jQuery

Question

I have a blob of HTML. How can I use jQuery to remove the class attribute from all anchor tags in the blob and then return the resulting HTML?

I feel like this should work, but it doesn't:

$(blob).filter('a').removeAttr('class').end().html()

(It returns the empty string)

Bonus points if you explain why my solution is wrong.

Answer 1

You want this:

$('<div></div>').append(blob).find('a').removeAttr('class').end().html()

.filter() takes the selected elements and removes all those that aren't <a> tags. .find() traverses into the entire tree, finding all anchor tags inside.