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Answer 1

+3 A:

Regexes are fundamentally bad at parsing HTML (see Can you provide some examples of why it is hard to parse XML and HTML with a regex? for why). What you need is an HTML parser. See Can you provide an example of parsing HTML with your favorite parser? for examples using a variety of parsers.

Chas. Owens 2009-05-18 20:32:34

I actually just read that. Know of any way using javascript to convert a string to a Document object I can use DOM functions on? The string is HTML, not XML, and I cannot insert it into the page nor use an iFrame. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/855404/can-javascript-access-the-dom-of-an-ajax-text-html-response)

Josh 2009-05-18 20:34:47

@Josh No, I don't (JavaScript is really my thing), but that is an interesting question. If only there were a place to ask interesting questions...

Chas. Owens 2009-05-18 20:47:43

@Chas. Thanks! Actually I am reading jQuery's source -- on that second link you provided someone claimed they were able to do this using jQuery.

Josh 2009-05-18 20:54:51

that should have been "JavaScript is really NOT my thing".

Chas. Owens 2009-05-18 21:27:33

@Chas. Owens -- I found the answer using DOM parsing. Which is what I wanted to do before but couldn't figure out how. Or rather, figured out how but must have had an error somewhere else and thought what I was trying to do wasn't possible. Thanks!

Josh 2009-05-18 21:33:40

Answer 2

A:

Why can't you just use the DOM?

var inputFields = document.getElementById('form_id').getElementsByTagName('input');
for (var i = 0, l = inputFields.length; i < l; i++) {
    // Do something with inputFields[i] ...
}

If you must use regex:

var formHTML = document.getElementById('form_id').innerHTML;
var inputs = formHTML.match(/<input.+?\/?>/g);

Note, the above regular expression is not reliable and will not work in ALL situations, hence why you should use the DOM! :)

J-P 2009-05-18 20:37:11

Wish I could use DOM. problem is I have a string not a Document object. Inserting string into the document causes document layout to change. Know of any way to parse an HTML string into a Document object w/o rendering it?

Josh 2009-05-18 20:39:28

You could render it in a hidden iframe...

J-P 2009-05-18 21:16:09

@J-P It is possible, using document.createElement() and innerHTML on that element. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/855404/can-javascript-access-the-dom-of-an-ajax-text-html-response

Josh 2009-05-18 21:34:58

Answer 3

A:

You can use document.createElement to create some element and then (ab)use it's innerHTML property to create a DOM from a string:

var html = document.createElement("div");
html.innerHTML = "<form><input/><input/><input/></form>";

// now you can use dom methods, e.g. getElementsByTagName
var inputs = html.getElementsByTagName("input");
var foo = inputs[0].value; // ...

You might have to manually remove your <html> tags beforehand though as IE has trouble parsing full documents (if I remember correctly).

Josef 2009-05-18 21:34:12

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Regexp to pull input tags out of form

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