How To Correctly Use Innerhtml To Create An Element (with Possible Children) From A Html String?

Note: I do NOT want to use any framework. The goal is just to create a function that will return an element based on an HTML string. Assume a simple HTML Document like such: <

Solution 1:

This is similar to the answer from palswim, except that it doesn't bother with creating a clone, and uses a while() loop instead, always appending the node at [0].

functioncreateElement( str ) {
    var frag = document.createDocumentFragment();

    var elem = document.createElement('div');
    elem.innerHTML = str;

    while (elem.childNodes[0]) {
        frag.appendChild(elem.childNodes[0]);
    }
    return frag;
}

Solution 2:

You'd have to attach the new element somewhere. Try using a DocumentFragment object in conjunction with the div you created:

functioncreateElement(str) {
    var div = document.createElement('div');
    div.innerHTML = str;
    var container = document.createDocumentFragment();
    for (var i=0; i < div.childNodes.length; i++) {
        var node = div.childNodes[i].cloneNode(true);
        container.appendChild(node);
    }
    return container.childNodes;
}

It's more overhead, but it does what you want. Note that DOM elements' .insertAdjacentHTML member function is coming in HTML5.

For that complex string you passed, it isn't valid XHTML syntax - you can't have a block element as a child of <p> (<h2> is a block level element).