How do I dynamically populate html elements with JSON Data with Javascript not jQuery?

Question

I have this following JSON data snippit:

{"items": [
 {
   "title": "sample 1",
   "author": "author 1"
 },
 {
  "title": "sample 2",
  "author": "author 2"
 }
]}

How do I populate the following html elements with this data:

<div class="news-story">
 <h5>sample 1</h5>
 <p>By: author 1</p>
 <h5>sample 2</h5>
 <p>By: author 2</p>
</div>

I want accomplish this with Javascript not jQuery.

Answer 1

Loop through them and use the DOM functions:

var news = document.getElementsByClassName("news-story")[0];
var items = json.items;
for(var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
    var h5 = document.createElement("h5");
    h5.innerHTML = items[i].title;
    news.appendChild(h5);
    var p = document.createElement("p");
    p.innerHTML = items[i].author;
    news.appendChild(p);

}

http://jsfiddle.net/AWRAW/

getElementsByClassName will not work in versions of IE prior to 9. If you need to support those though, you're really better off using jQuery.

Answer 2

var div = document.getElementsByClassName('news-story')[0],
    h5 = div.getElementsByTagName('h5'),
    p = div.getElementsByTagName('p'),
    data = JSON.parse( my_JSON_data );

data.items.forEach(function(v,i) {
    h5[i].innerHTML = v.title;
    p[i].innerHTML = "By: " + v.author;
});

JSFIDDLE DEMO

---

If you need to support older browsers, you can use a typical for statement instead of the forEach method.

for( var i = 0; i < data.items.length; ++i ) {
    var v = data.items[i];
    h5[i].innerHTML = v.title;
    p[i].innerHTML = "By: " + v.author;
}

And I'd suggest using an ID instead of a class for the news-story element, so you can use getElementById instead (unless of course you have several of them) .

If that's impossible, you may want to use a compatibility function from MDN for getElementsByClassName .

---

If you needed to create the inner elements, then here's one way:

var div = document.getElementsByClassName('news-story')[0],
    data = JSON.parse( my_JSON_data ),
    html;

html = data.items.map(function(v,i) {
    return '<h5>' + v.title + '</h5>' +
           '<p>By: ' + v.author + '</p>';
}).join('');

div.innerHTML = html;

JSFIDDLE DEMO

---

@Xeon06 shows how in his answer using createElement() , which is arguably a better approach.

Here's how I'd do it:

var div = document.getElementsByClassName('news-story')[0],
    frag = document.createDocumentFragment(),
    data = JSON.parse( my_JSON_data );

data.items.forEach(function(v,i) {
    frag.appendChild( document.createElement('h5') ).innerHTML = v.title;
    frag.appendChild( document.createElement('p') ).innerHTML = "By: " + v.author;
});
div.appendChild( frag );

JSFIDDLE DEMO

And of course you can modify it to use a for statement instead:

var div = document.getElementsByClassName('news-story')[0],
    frag = document.createDocumentFragment(),
    data = JSON.parse( my_JSON_data );

for( var i = 0; i < data.items.length; ++i ) {
    var v = data.items[i];
    frag.appendChild( document.createElement('h5') ).innerHTML = v.title;
    frag.appendChild( document.createElement('p') ).innerHTML = "By: " + v.author;
}
div.appendChild( frag );

The benefit of using a documentFragment is that you can do a single append to the DOM via the fragment instead of multiple appends. This gives better performance, especially if you have a large set of data.

Answer 3

Better late than never... I recently made a lib to do just this!

FragBuilder is the library.. usage is pretty simple: for the example you have posted you would need to change around the JSON a bit to make it a bit more semantic...

var frag = [{"items": [
 {
   "title": "sample 1",
   "author": "author 1"
 },
 {
  "title": "sample 2",
  "author": "author 2"
 }
]}];

would become

var frag = [ { "childNodes" : [ { "childNodes" : [ { "textContent" : "sample 1" } ],
          "tagName" : "H5"
        },
        { "childNodes" : [ { "textContent" : "By: author 1" } ],
          "tagName" : "P"
        },
        { "childNodes" : [ { "textContent" : "sample 2" } ],
          "tagName" : "H5"
        },
        { "childNodes" : [ { "textContent" : "By: author 2" } ],
          "tagName" : "P"
        }
      ],
    "className" : "news-story",
    "tagName" : "DIV"
  } ];

then you would generate a DocumentFragment by calling FragBuilder(frag)

There is also a reverse function if you find it easier to template using HTML then convert to JSON https://gist.github.com/2313580 (note, whitespace between tags is not handled and will cause failures)

Answer 4

I've found that the most reliable way to create DOM elements is using the element.innerHTML property. Basically you'd have a DIV or SPAN at the place at the place on the page where you want to render the new HTML. Then you'd grab that span in javascripting using document.getElementById("DIV-ID") and then set the innerHTML property of the DIV to the new HTML that you would generate from the JSON object. There are a bunch of other JavaScript functions to create elements, but I've found that they're not always reliable and don't always have the best cross-browser support.

http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/prop_html_innerhtml.asp

Answer 5

Sample with no jQuery:

<html>
    <head>
        <title>test</title>
    </head>
    <body>
       <div class="news-story">
            <h5>sample 1</h5>
            <p>By: author 1</p>
            <h5>sample 2</h5>
            <p>By: author 2</p>
        </div> 
        <script type="text/javascript">
            var json = {
                "items": [
                    {
                    "title": "sample x",
                    "author": "author x"
                    },
                    {
                    "title": "sample y",
                    "author": "author y"
                    }
                ]
            };

            var bindDataToHTML = function(data, element) {
                 var h5 = null;
                 var p = null;
                 h5 = element.getElementsByTagName("h5");
                 p  = element.getElementsByTagName("p");
                 h5[0].innerText = data.items[0].title;
                 h5[1].innerText = data.items[1].title;
                 p[0].innerText = data.items[0].author;
                 p[1].innerText = data.items[1].author;
            };

            document.getElementsByClassName = function(cl) {
                var retnode = [];
                var myclass = new RegExp('\\b'+cl+'\\b');
                var elem = this.getElementsByTagName('*');
                for (var i = 0; i < elem.length; i++) {
                    var classes = elem[i].className;
                    if (myclass.test(classes)) { retnode.push(elem[i]); }
                }
                return retnode;
            };

            // For sample purpose, let's imagine this method is a callback
            // for a request that provides you with your json data
            var doRequest = function() {
                var data = json;
                var element = null;

                var x = document.getElementsByClassName("news-story");

                if((null != x) && (0 < x.length)) {
                    element = x[0];
                }
                bindDataToHTML(data, element);
            };

            (function() {
                doRequest();
            })();

        </script>
    </body>
</html>

Answer 6

尝试JsRender和JsViews或小胡子/余烬

Answer 7

$(document).ready(function () {
    loadfunctionAjax();
});
var loadfunctionAjax = function () {
    $.ajax({
        type: 'GET',
        url: '/Site/SocialLink',
        contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
        dataType: "json",
        success: function (data) {
            var HTML = '';
            for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
                item = data[i];
                HTML += '<li><a class="" target="_blank" href="' + item.FALink + '"><i class="fa ' + item.FAIcon + '"></i>' + item.Name + '</a ></li > ';
            }
            $('#footerSocialNav').append(HTML);
        }
    });
}