HTML inside Twitter Bootstrap popover

Question

You cannot use <li href="#" since it belongs to <a href="#" that's why it wasn't working, change it and it's all good.

Here is working JSFiddle which shows you how to create bootstrap popover.

Relevant parts of the code is below:

HTML:

<!-- 
Note: Popover content is read from "data-content" and "title" tags.
-->
<a tabindex="0"
   class="btn btn-lg btn-primary" 
   role="button" 
   data-html="true" 
   data-toggle="popover" 
   data-trigger="focus" 
   title="<b>Example popover</b> - title" 
   data-content="<div><b>Example popover</b> - content</div>">Example popover</a>

JavaScript:

$(function(){
    // Enables popover
    $("[data-toggle=popover]").popover();
});

And by the way, you always need at least $("[data-toggle=popover]").popover(); to enable the popover. But in place of data-toggle="popover" you can also use id="my-popover" or class="my-popover". Just remember to enable them using e.g: $("#my-popover").popover(); in those cases.

Here is the link to the complete spec: Bootstrap Popover

Bonus:

If for some reason you don't like or cannot read content of a popup from the data-content and title tags. You can also use e.g. hidden divs and a bit more JavaScript. Here is an example about that.

you can use attribute data-html="true":

<a href="#" id="example"  rel="popover" 
    data-content="<div>This <b>is</b> your div content</div>" 
    data-html="true" data-original-title="A Title">popover</a>

Another way to specify the popover content in a reusable way is to create a new data attribute like data-popover-content and use it like this:

HTML:

<!-- Popover #1 -->
<a class="btn btn-primary" data-placement="top" data-popover-content="#a1" data-toggle="popover" data-trigger="focus" href="#" tabindex="0">Popover Example</a>

<!-- Content for Popover #1 -->
<div class="hidden" id="a1">
  <div class="popover-heading">
    This is the heading for #1
  </div>

  <div class="popover-body">
    This is the body for #1
  </div>
</div>

JS:

$(function(){
    $("[data-toggle=popover]").popover({
        html : true,
        content: function() {
          var content = $(this).attr("data-popover-content");
          return $(content).children(".popover-body").html();
        },
        title: function() {
          var title = $(this).attr("data-popover-content");
          return $(title).children(".popover-heading").html();
        }
    });
});

This can be useful when you have a lot of html to place into your popovers.

Here is an example fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/z824fn6b/

You need to create a popover instance that has the html option enabled (place this in your javascript file after the popover JS code):

$('.popover-with-html').popover({ html : true });

I used a pop over inside a list, Im giving an example via HTML

<a type="button" data-container="body" data-toggle="popover" data-html="true" data-placement="right" data-content='<ul class="nav"><li><a href="#">hola</li><li><a href="#">hola2</li></ul>'>

You only need put data-html="true" in the link popover. Is gonna work.

This is an old question, but this is another way, using jQuery to reuse the popover and to keep using the original bootstrap data attributes to make it more semantic:

The link

<a href="#" rel="popover" data-trigger="focus" data-popover-content="#popover">
   Show it!
</a>

Custom content to show

<!-- Let's show the Bootstrap nav on the popover-->
<div id="list-popover" class="hide">
    <ul class="nav nav-pills nav-stacked">
        <li><a href="#">Action</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">Another action</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">Something else here</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">Separated link</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

Javascript

$('[rel="popover"]').popover({
    container: 'body',
    html: true,
    content: function () {
        var clone = $($(this).data('popover-content')).clone(true).removeClass('hide');
        return clone;
    }
});

Fiddle with complete example: http://jsfiddle.net/tomsarduy/262w45L5/