Use Jquery Selectors on $.AJAX loaded HTML?

Question

I have

$.ajax({   url: identity,   success: function(data) { ProcessIdentityServer(data) } }); 

When 'data' is returned, is there a way to run selectors against it without adding it into the DOM. So for example, how can I get all the href values of any LINK tags contained in the HTML held in 'data' without adding it to the DOM first? Seems a shame to have to add it into the DOM if all I want to do is extract some stuff into an array. Anyone got any ideas?

Answer 1

One note I will add which is from a similar problem on here is that if your AJAX returns the following:

<div class="test">Hello</div> <div class="one">World</div> 

The following jQuery Won't work:

$(data).find('div.test'); 

as the divs are top level elements and data isn't an element but a string, to make it work you need to use .filter

$(data).filter('div.test');