Get Outer html

Question

How do I get the outerHTML of a jquery object? The following is not working.

$("selector").outerHTML;

Answer 1

A jQuery object has in it a reference to the native element you want and you can extract it with $('selector')[0], from there you can use native JS.

var outer = $('selector')[0].outerHTML;

Another option is to create a temporary element where the first one is inserted and the .html(). You may need this solution if you have several elements.

var outer = $('<div>').append($('selector').clone()).html();

or without having to clone:

var outer  = $('selector').wrapAll('<div>').parent().html();

Answer 2

Use

$("selector")[0].outerHTML;