ajax make responseText to be an object

Question

I need to get ajax answer as DOM object.

This is my code:

$.ajax(URL, {
    async: false,
    complete: function(e){
        code = $(e.responseText);
        alert( code.find('body').length );
    }
});

So I need to make response as an object and then make selection in it.

But in previous sample my Firebug returns:

Object[<TextNode textContent="\n\n \n ">, title, <TextNode textContent="\n">, meta, <TextNode textContent="\n">, meta, <TextNode textContent="\n">, meta, <TextNode textContent="\n">, meta, <TextNode textContent="\n">, meta, <TextNode textContent="\n">

---

For example, this code works fine:

$.get(URL, function(e){
    var code = $(e);
    alert( code.find('body').length );
});

But I need to make async request, so $.get is not an option (or I can't find solution with it).

Thanks for advise!

Answer 1

Your ajax code is not correct that should be something like this and you can get the response in the success callback instead:

$.ajax({
   url:URL,
   type : "get", 
   dataType: "html", // expected output from the requested url
   success: function(e){
      code = $(e.responseText); // or try with $(e) only
      alert( code.find('body').length );
   }, 
   error: function(err){
      alert(err.responseText);
   }
});

Answer 2

The only solution that I found at this moment is to make returned data as html and then it will able to manipulate with it. My working example is:

$.ajax({
    url: URL,
    async: false,
    type : "get",
    dataType: "html",
    success: function(data){
        var response = $('<html/>').html(data);
        alert(response.find('#ELEM').length);
    }
});

So, as you can see - I made response data to be HTML and it helps me to use .find() and other helpful things.

Hope this solution will be helpful.