html parsing errors when dom is dynamically updated to new html content

Question

I have recently started upgrading my website to send and receive requests/response through ajax. I'm using the protoytpe library.

My exisiting html code contains certain img and input tags that aren't closed.

When i try to update the content of a element (say "div") with such html code by using the innerHTML property, i get parse errors such as "junk code" or "not well formed" etc.

Without using ajax, ie, without dynamic update of dom, the page is functioning normally even with the above html non-standard coding.

Is there Any way to use dynamic updating and still avoid hitting parse errors???

Answer 1

Yes, you can use dynamic updating if you make sure your page is standards compliant. JS libraries are designed with that in mind, and they have problems inserting data on non-standards compliant pages. You can probably fix the problem by simply closing the tags.

Answer 2

If you are using prototype.js, try using the "insert" and "update" methods.

http://www.prototypejs.org/api/element/insert

http://www.prototypejs.org/api/element/update