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I have a page which outputs HTML in ASP.NET webforms.

I am making a request to this page via:

$(document).ready(function () {
            $.get("Preview.aspx?ID=1", function (data) {
                alert("Data Loaded: " + data);
            });
        });

The problem is that the preview.aspx page returns HTML with form elements in it. I want to replace these form elements with nothing.

How do I remove all form elements from the data object above?

EDIT: Just to be clear, I need to keep all HTML in place, only replacing form elements.

EDIT 2: Sorry I should have been more clear. This is for an HTML newsletter. Basically the page is pure HTML but being web forms (yuck) there is all the form mumbo jumbo. I want to get the content of this page without the form elements. So far the ideas below are not working. The .load works, but when I add the :not('form') the HTML is incorrectly formatted. The get var elem = $(data).find('form').html(); returns null even though the form is definitely there when I do an alert(data).

izip
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1 Answers1

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You might be better off using jQuery's .load method. This way, you can select a fragment from the external page using any jQuery selector.

If you wrap all of the relevant info from Preview.aspx in a <div id="whatever"> tag, you can extract just that with 

$('<div/>').load('Preview.aspx?ID=1 #whatever', function() {
    var preview = $(this).html();
});

-- which has the added benefit of ignoring all the html/head/body/etc. tags in that document.

You can also use it this way, which will get everything that's not a form or input tag but might let other stuff inside the form through. Use carefully and modify as needed:

$('<div/>').load('Preview.aspx?ID=1 :not("form"):not("input")', function() {
    var preview = $(this).html();
});
Blazemonger
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  • just my tuppence - I was using .load() until not very long ago, at which point I switched to using .get() and .post() for a number of reasons, but still needed to get and parse returned html - $(data) worked for me but also allowed me to use the more flexible get and post methods. just pointing out that .load() isn't nearly as flexible as the other ajax methods available - e.g you can't abort a load() request like you can with others. – totallyNotLizards Sep 29 '11 at 15:35
  • @jammypeach: Yes, I've noted elsewhere that a key advantage of using `$.ajax()` instead of jQuery's various shorthand methods is that it's more verbose, letting you add such useful essentials as an error callback. – Blazemonger Sep 29 '11 at 15:38
  • Using the :not("form"):not("input") messes up the HTML for me. Puts elements in a random order and the doc type / head etc is missing. – izip Sep 29 '11 at 15:46
  • @izip: it might help if you told us what you plan to do with Preview.aspx once you've got it. If you need the entire content of the document, including `` and `` tags, then `.load` won't work for you. – Blazemonger Sep 29 '11 at 15:48
  • Edited question to be more clear, and the problems I am getting with the outlined responses. – izip Sep 29 '11 at 15:54
  • @mblase75 i was havn probs with view states.. :not form worked for me.. thanx dude – ravi404 Apr 08 '12 at 15:26