如何从Javascript中解析外部文件中的html

Question

I feel like I should know this, but as I'm sitting down trying to access an html file from my Javascript I don't really know where to start. I am using jQuery so do I just want to use jQuery.ajax()?

The external html is a table with various premium values, stored on the same domain but in a separate directory. When a user enters their birth year previously in the form and selects whether or not they are male or female and a smoker or non-smoker, I return specific values based on their age.

In the table below if they were 21, male, non-smoker i'd want to return the value in the mns cell from row #id21.

<table id="premiumRateTable" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th id="age">Age Next Birthday</th>
            <th id="cover">Default Cover</th>
            <th id="mns">Male Non-smoker</th>
            <th id="ms">Male Smoker</th>
            <th id="fns">Female Non-smoker</th>
            <th id="fs">Female Smoker</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        <tr id="id20">
            <td headers="age">20</td>
            <td headers="cover">$100,000</td>
            <td headers="mns">$108.99</td>
            <td headers="ms">$154.55</td>
            <td headers="fns">$44.31</td>
            <td headers="fs">$68.61</td>
        </tr>
        <tr id="id21">
            <td headers="age">21</td>
            <td headers="cover">$150,000</td>
            <td headers="mns">$160.81</td>
            <td headers="ms">$229.15</td>
            <td headers="fns">$58.16</td>
            <td headers="fs">$77.48</td>
        </tr>
        <tr id="id22">
            <td headers="age">22</td>
            <td headers="cover">$150,000</td>
            <td headers="mns">$139.37</td>
            <td headers="ms">$199.167</td>
            <td headers="fns">$58.28</td>
            <td headers="fs">$72.89</td>
        </tr>
        <tr id="id23">
            <td headers="age">23</td>
            <td headers="cover">$150,000</td>
            <td headers="mns">$128.64</td>
            <td headers="ms">$183.59</td>
            <td headers="fns">$56.28</td>
            <td headers="fs">$72.89</td>
        </tr>
        <tr id="id24">
            <td headers="age">24</td>
            <td headers="cover">$150,000</td>
            <td headers="mns">$121.94</td>
            <td headers="ms">$172.87</td>
            <td headers="fns">$58.29</td>
            <td headers="fs">$79.90</td>
        </tr>
        <tr id="id25">
            <td headers="age">25</td>
            <td headers="cover">$150,000</td>
            <td headers="mns">$112.56</td>
            <td headers="ms">$158.13</td>
            <td headers="fns">$61.11</td>
            <td headers="fs">$84.91</td>
        </tr>

    </tbody>
</table>    

Answer 1

Load the table once ( $(document).ready() ) and add it to an invisible element at the end of the body.

var dummyDiv = $("<div id='dummyDiv'/>").css("display","none");
dummyDiv.load("otherpage.html #id"+age);
dummyDiv.css("display","none");
$("body").append(dummyDiv);

And then you can run this code from anywhere to get the values from that table.

var dummyDiv = $("#dummyDiv");
var valYouWant = "mns"; //example value to grab
var value = dummyDiv.find('td[headers="'+valYouWant+'"]').text();
//do whatever you'd like with 'value'