You would need to hold onto the original response to do this...

$("#hiddendiv").html(data);
$("#div").text(data);

Then you could get it back out...

var html = $("#hiddendiv").html();

Update based on comment...

You can remove that element before you display it...

var html = $(data);
$('#cookiediv', html).hide();
$('#div').html(html);

Where the cookie message has id="cookiediv" - you may need to adjust the selector to get to this div, but it is almost certainly possible to grab it.

You can do this:

var $html = $('<iframe width="854" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gYKqrjq5IjU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>');    
var str = $html.prop('outerHTML');
console.log(str);

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.2.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

FIDDLE DEMO

Update:

From jQuery 1.8, we can use $.parseHTML, which will parse the HTML string to an array of DOM nodes. eg:

var dom_nodes = .parseHTML('<div><input type="text" value="val" /></div>'));

alert( dom_nodes.find('input').val() );

DEMO

var string = '<div><input type="text" value="val" /></div>';

$('<div/>').html(string).contents();

DEMO

What's happening in this code:

• $('<div/>') is a fake <div> that does not exist in the DOM
• $('<div/>').html(string) appends string within that fake <div> as children
• .contents() retrieves the children of that fake <div> as a jQuery object

If you want to make .find() work then try this:

var string = '<div><input type="text" value="val" /></div>',
    object = $('<div/>').html(string).contents();

alert( object.find('input').val() );

DEMO

$.parseHTML() parses a string into an array of DOM nodes.

To create the object you need to add $():

.parseHTML(yourString))

Take a look at this fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/j05ucnfv/

Reference: http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.parseHTML/

I assume you're asking for the full HTML string. If that's the case, something like this will do the trick:

$('<div>').append($('#item-of-interest').clone()).html(); 

This is explained in more depth here, but essentially you make a new node to wrap the item of interest, do the manipulations, remove it, and grab the HTML.

If you're just after a string representation, then go with new String(obj).

Update

I wrote the original answer in 2009. As of 2014, most major browsers now support outerHTML as a native property (see, for example, Firefox and Internet Explorer), so you can do:

$('#item-of-interest').prop('outerHTML');

I think both answers by Matt Schmiermund and Alex Gidan are directing you to the right place.

You should try something like this :

var a = "<div>Your HTML & More</div>";
var span = document.createElement("span");
$(span).text(a)
$(span).html()

this will return the following :

"<div>Your HTML & More</div>"

If you want to use jQuery, you can use the text(string) method.

$(".selector").text("x < 5");

http://api.jquery.com/text/

Take simple nested example.

var dom_string = '<div>xxx<div>yyy</div></div>';

create HTML DOM elements using $() function of jquery and append wherever you want. i have taken 'body' but you can append anywhere.

$(dom_string).appendTo('body');

Alternatively you can implement this with pure javascript:

var dom_target = document.getElementById("target");
dom_target.innerHTML = dom_string;

split the initial string on the comma, then map over the resulting array. On each iteration of map you can then split on the colon, and return a HTML string. You just need to make sure you join the array that map returns into a new string before you add it to the DOM.

const str = 'i1:1,i3:5,i2:5';

const result = str.split(',').map(el => {
  const [key, value] = el.split(':');
  return `<li id="${key}" value="${value}">${value}</li>`;
}).join('');

const ol = document.querySelector('ol');
ol.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', `<ul>${result}</ul>`);

<ol />

Additional documentation

• Destructuring assignment

• Template literals

• insertAdjacentHTML

$('.post .posttext a').html(YourfunctionThatReturnsAString());

This should do it