How to get HTML data with javascript

Question

Hello,

I have an HTML web page full of divs and span tags identified with class that have lots of data I need in other format. I was wondering what would be the best way to do this with javascript.

Thank you for the help.

Answer 1

The fastest way? jQuery:

$(".myClass").each(function() {
    // work with your data here
});

Answer 2

More lowlevel, but should be a lot faster (a lot less overhead):

var myelements = document.evaluate('//div[@class=myClass"]', document, null, XPathResult.ORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
for (var i = 0; i < myelements.snapshotLength; i++) {
  var dataElement = myelements.snapshotItem(i);
  // work with your data here
}

(ok, you'd have to do it twice (once for div and once for span), it's more code and doesn't look as nice, but it should still be faster)

Answer 3

If you are wanting to get at all of the documents with a specific class then you will need to test for the presence of that class on each object. You will want to use a

document.getElementByTagName("*") // This should select everything

and loop through them to detect the proper name.

if (regex test == true) {
    // you found an element that matches
    // do what you will with it.
} 

If you find the elements you need do what you need with them. Now you have processed all elements on the page and found elements that match your criteria. Good luck.