jQuery/javascript replace tag type

Question

Is there an easy way to loop through all td tags and change them to th? (etc).

My current approach would be to wrap them with the th and then remove the td, but then I lose other properties etc.

Answer 1

jQuery.replaceTagName

The following is a jQuery plugin to replace the tag name of DOM elements.

Source

(function($) {     $.fn.replaceTagName = function(replaceWith) {         var tags = [],             i    = this.length;         while (i--) {             var newElement = document.createElement(replaceWith),                 thisi      = this[i],                 thisia     = thisi.attributes;             for (var a = thisia.length - 1; a >= 0; a--) {                 var attrib = thisia[a];                 newElement.setAttribute(attrib.name, attrib.value);             };             newElement.innerHTML = thisi.innerHTML;             $(thisi).after(newElement).remove();             tags[i] = newElement;         }         return $(tags);     }; })(window.jQuery); 

Minified Source

(function(e){e.fn.replaceTagName=function(t){var n=[],r=this.length;while(r--){var i=document.createElement(t),s=this[r],o=s.attributes;for(var u=o.length-1;u>=0;u--){var a=o[u];i.setAttribute(a.name,a.value)}i.innerHTML=s.innerHTML;e(s).after(i).remove();n[r]=i}return e(n)}})(window.jQuery); 

Usage

Include the above minified source in your javascript after jQuery.

Then you can use the plugin like this:

$('div').replaceTagName('span'); // replace all divs with spans 

Or in your case this:

$('td').replaceTagName('th'); 

jQuery selectors work as expected

$('.replace_us').replaceTagName('span'); // replace all elements with "replace_us" class with spans $('#replace_me').replaceTagName('div'); // replace the element with the id "replace_me" 

More resources

jsFiddle with Qunit tests

Answer 2

Completely untested, but giving this a whirl:

$("td").each(function(index) {   var thisTD = this;   var newElement = $("<th></th>");   $.each(this.attributes, function(index) {     $(newElement).attr(thisTD.attributes[index].name, thisTD.attributes[index].value);   });   $(this).after(newElement).remove(); }); 

I'm looking and looking at it, and I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't work!

1) loop through each td element
2) create a new th element
3) for each of those td's, loop over each of its attributes
4) add that attribute and value to the new th element
5) once all attributes are in place, add the element to the DOM right after the td, and remove the td

Edit: works fine: http://jsbin.com/uqofu3/edit