I want to save an element's html to a variable

Question

I know how to use .html() to grab the html inside of my selected element, like so:

<div id="outside>
    <span>hello</span>
</div>

using something like

var span = $('#outside).html();

will grab my span as the html. My problem is when I have

<img id="image" src="image.png">

How can I assign the html, as a string, to a variable? Using

var image = $('#image').html() 

gives me an empty string.

var image = $('#image')[0]

appears to get the html I want, but its actually still an object.

Answer 1

Try this:

var myAwesomeHTML = $('#image')[0].outerHTML

update:

$("<div></div>").append($("#image")).html()