How to create a DOM node as an object?

Question

I would like to create a DOM node, set the 'id' attribute and then append it to 'body'. The following seems not to work because jQuery doesn't see my template as an object:

var template = "<li><div class='bar'>bla</div></li>"; template.find('li').attr('id','1234'); $(body).append(template); 

How can I tell jQuery to treat this as an object so find() works on it?

Answer 1

I'd put it in the DOM first. I'm not sure why my first example failed. That's really weird.

var e = $("<ul><li><div class='bar'>bla</div></li></ul>"); $('li', e).attr('id','a1234');  // set the attribute  $('body').append(e); // put it into the DOM      

Putting e (the returns elements) gives jQuery context under which to apply the CSS selector. This keeps it from applying the ID to other elements in the DOM tree.

The issue appears to be that you aren't using the UL. If you put a naked li in the DOM tree, you're going to have issues. I thought it could handle/workaround this, but it can't.

You may not be putting naked LI's in your DOM tree for your "real" implementation, but the UL's are necessary for this to work. Sigh.

Example: http://jsbin.com/iceqo

By the way, you may also be interested in microtemplating.

Answer 2

Try this:

var div = $('<div></div>').addClass('bar').text('bla'); var li = $('<li></li>').attr('id', '1234'); li.append(div);  $('body').append(li); 

Obviously, it doesn't make sense to append a li to the body directly. Basically, the trick is to construct the DOM elementr tree with $('your html here'). I suggest to use CSS modifiers (.text(), .addClass() etc) as opposed to making jquery parse raw HTML, it will make it much easier to change things later.