Extract HTML from XML in a jQuery AJAX request

By Alex|AJAX, XML|2 Comments

This is a bit tricky when you are parsing XML with jQuery. As you will realize, all HTML passed is ignored, and only the text is displayed. I have seen many people do this, which unfortunately won't work!

$(xml).find('element').each(function(){
	if($(this).text() < 0){
		alert($(this).text())
	}
});

Now this will throw an error, you can't take HTML from XML attributes like that!, you have to use $(this).text() as your function. So how will we do this?

The solution is very simple, where you generate the XML, make sure you wrap the html code with the CDATA marker as follows:

<element attribute="value"><![CDATA[Some HTML <span style="color:red">code</span> here]]></element>

And that will work perfectly!