load an HTML string into jQuery without requesting images

Question

Is there a way to load an HTML string that contains image tags into jQuery without requesting the images? I want to be able to run selectors on the jQuery object to extract some information. Taking the following example:

var string = $('<p><img src="http://image.url/file.jpg" /></p>');
string.find('img');

The browser will make a request for http://image.url/file.jpg. I'm trying to find a way to do the same but without the browser making a request for the image.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use an XML document to perform the search:

function searchXml(xmlStr, selector) {
    var parser, xmlDoc;
    if(window.DOMParser) {
        parser = new DOMParser();
        xmlDoc = parser.parseFromString(xmlStr, "text/xml");
    } else {
        xmlDoc=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");
        xmlDoc.async = false;
        xmlDoc.loadXML(xmlStr); 
    }
    return $(xmlDoc).find(selector);
}

console.log(searchXml('<p><img src="http://image.url/file.jpg" /></p>', 'img').attr('src'));​​​​

See it in action: http://jsfiddle.net/na9Tt/

Keep in mind it is an XML document, not an HTML document, so some particular types of searches which are specific to HTML may not work exactly the same way.