JS How to replace html element with another element text represented in string

Question

I have a problem with replacing html elements   For example  here is a table    lt table gt       lt tr gt           lt td id  idTABLE  gt 0 lt  td gt           lt td gt END lt  td gt       lt  tr gt   lt  table gt     it can be div  span  anything   And string in JavaScript   var str     lt td gt 1 lt  td gt  lt td gt 2 lt  td gt       It can be anything  123 text   lt span gt 123 element lt  span gt  456 or  lt tr gt  lt td gt 123 lt  td gt  or anything   How can I replace element idTABLE with str   So    lt table gt       lt tr gt           lt td id  idTABLE  gt 0 lt  td gt           lt td gt END lt  td gt       lt  tr gt   lt  table gt    Becomes    lt table gt       lt tr gt           lt td gt 1 lt  td gt           lt td gt 2 lt  td gt           lt td gt END lt  td gt       lt  tr gt   lt  table gt    lt  -- str     lt td gt 1 lt  td gt  lt td gt 2 lt  td gt    -- gt    lt table gt       lt tr gt          123 text          lt td gt END lt  td gt       lt  tr gt   lt  table gt   lt  -- str    123 text  -- gt    lt table gt       lt tr gt            lt td gt 123 lt  td gt            lt td gt END lt  td gt       lt  tr gt   lt  table gt   lt  -- str     lt td gt 123 lt  td gt   -- gt    I tried createElement  replaceChild  cloneNode  but with no result at all

User · Answer

Using jQuery you can do this   var str     lt td gt 1 lt  td gt  lt td gt 2 lt  td gt          TABLE     replaceWith str     http   jsfiddle net hZBeW 4   Or in pure javascript   var str     lt td gt 1 lt  td gt  lt td gt 2 lt  td gt    var tdElement   document getElementById    TABLE      var trElement   tdElement parentNode  trElement removeChild tdElement   trElement innerHTML   str   trElement innerHTML    http   jsfiddle net hZBeW 1

User · Answer

You would first remove the table  then add the new replacement to the table s parent object   Look up removeChild and appendChild   http   javascript about com library bldom09 htm  https   developer mozilla org en-US docs DOM Node appendChild  Edit  jQuery  append allows sting-html without removing tags  http   api jquery com append

User · Answer

Your input in this case is too ambiguous   Your code will have to know if it should just insert the text as-is or parse out some HTML tags  or otherwise wind up with bad HTML    This is unneeded complexity that you can avoid by adjusting the input you provide   If the garbled input is unavoidable  then without some sophisticated parsing  preferably in a separate function   you could end up with some bad HTML  like you do in your second example    which is Bad  right     I m guessing you want a function to insert columns into a 1-row table   In this case  your contents should be passed in as an array  without table  tr  td tags    Each array element will be one column   HTML   lt table id    TABLE    gt  lt tr gt  lt td gt  lt  td gt  lt  tr gt  lt  table gt    JS  using jQuery for brevity     function insert columns  columns        var  row       lt tr gt  lt  tr gt          for  var i   0  i  lt  columns length  i             row append   lt td gt   columns i    lt  td gt                TABLE     empty       remove everything inside            TABLE     append  row       So then     insert columns   hello    there    world       Result   lt table id    TABLE    gt  lt tr gt  lt td gt hello lt  td gt  lt td gt there lt  td gt  lt td gt world lt  td gt  lt  tr gt  lt  table gt

User · Answer

If you need to actually replace the td you are selecting from the DOM  then you need to first go to the parentNode  then replace the contents replace the innerHTML with a new html string representing what you want  The trick is converting the first-table-cell  to a string so you can then use it in a string replace method   I added a fiddle example  http   jsfiddle net vzUF4    lt table gt  lt tr gt  lt td id  first-table-cell  gt 0 lt  td gt  lt td gt END lt  td gt  lt  tr gt  lt  table gt    lt script gt    var firstTableCell   document getElementById  first-table-cell      var tableRow   firstTableCell parentNode       Create a separate node used to convert node into string    var renderingNode   document createElement  tr      renderingNode appendChild firstTableCell cloneNode true         Do a simple string replace on the html   var stringVersionOfFirstTableCell   renderingNode innerHTML    tableRow innerHTML   tableRow innerHTML replace stringVersionOfFirstTableCell        lt td gt 0 lt  td gt  lt td gt 1 lt  td gt      lt  script gt    A lot of the complexity here is that you are mixing DOM methods with string methods  If DOM methods work for your application  it would be much bette to use those   You can also do this with pure DOM methods  document createElement  removeChild  appendChild   but it takes more lines of code and your question explicitly said you wanted to use a string

User · Answer

Because you are talking about your replacement being anything  and also replacing in the middle of an element s children  it becomes more tricky than just inserting a singular element  or directly removing and appending   function replaceTargetWith  targetID  html          find our target   var i  tmp  elm  last  target   document getElementById targetID         create a temporary div or tr  to support tds    tmp   document createElement html indexOf   lt td    -1  tr   div           fill that div with our html  this generates our children   tmp innerHTML   html        step through the temporary div s children and insertBefore our target   i   tmp childNodes length        the insertBefore method was more complicated than I first thought so I        have improved it  Have to be careful when dealing with child lists as         they are counted as live lists and so will update as and when you make       changes  This is why it is best to work backwards when moving children        around  and why I m assigning the elements I m working with to  elm         and  last    last   target    while i--       target parentNode insertBefore  elm   tmp childNodes i    last       last   elm            remove the target    target parentNode removeChild target       example usage   replaceTargetWith   idTABLE    I  lt b gt can lt  b gt  be  lt div gt anything lt  div gt        demo    http   jsfiddle net 97H5Y 1    By using the  innerHTML of our temporary div this will generate the TextNodes and Elements we need to insert without any hard work  But rather than insert the temporary div itself -- this would give us mark up that we don t want -- we can just scan and insert it s children      either that or look to using jQuery and it s replaceWith method   jQuery   idTABLE   replaceWith   lt blink gt Why this tag   lt  blink gt         update 2012 11 15  As a response to EL 2002 s comment above      It not always possible  For example  when createElement  div   and set its innerHTML as  lt td gt 123 lt  td gt   this div becomes  lt div gt 123 lt  div gt   js throws away inappropriate td tag     The above problem obviously negates my solution as well - I have updated my code above accordingly  at least for the td issue   However for certain HTML this will occur no matter what you do  All user agents interpret HTML via their own parsing rules  but nearly all of them will attempt to auto-correct bad HTML  The only way to achieve exactly what you are talking about  in some of your examples  is to take the HTML out of the DOM entirely  and manipulate it as a string  This will be the only way to achieve a markup string with the following  jQuery will not get around this issue either     lt table gt  lt tr gt 123 text lt td gt END lt  td gt  lt  tr gt  lt  table gt    If you then take this string an inject it into the DOM  depending on the browser you will get the following   123 text lt table gt  lt tr gt  lt td gt END lt  td gt  lt  tr gt  lt  table gt    lt table gt  lt tr gt  lt td gt END lt  td gt  lt  tr gt  lt  table gt    The only question that remains is why you would want to achieve broken HTML in the first place

User · Answer

As the Jquery replaceWith   code was too bulky  tricky and complicated  here s my own solution      The best way is to use outerHTML property  but it is not crossbrowsered yet  so I did some trick  weird enough  but simple   Here is the code  var str     lt a href  http   www com  gt item to replace lt  a gt      it can be anything var Obj   document getElementById  TargetObject      any element to be fully replaced if Obj outerHTML      if outerHTML is supported     Obj outerHTML str     it s simple replacement of whole element with contents of str var   else     if outerHTML is not supported  there is a weird but crossbrowsered trick     var tmpObj document createElement  div        tmpObj innerHTML   lt  --THIS DATA SHOULD BE REPLACED-- gt        ObjParent Obj parentNode    Okey  element should be parented     ObjParent replaceChild tmpObj Obj     here we placing our temporary data instead of our target  so we can find it then and replace it into whatever we want to replace to     ObjParent innerHTML ObjParent innerHTML replace   lt div gt  lt  --THIS DATA SHOULD BE REPLACED-- gt  lt  div gt   str       That s all

User · Answer

idTABLE parentElement innerHTML      lt span gt 123 element lt  span gt  456     while this works  it s still recommended to use getElementById  Do DOM tree elements with ids become global variables   replaceChild would work fine if you want to go to the trouble of building up your replacement  element by element  using document createElement and appendChild  but I don t see the point

User · Answer

use the attribute  innerHTML   somehow select the table   var a   document getElementById  table  div  whatever node  id   a innerHTML   your text

[javascript] JS. How to replace html element with another element/text, represented in string?

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