How do I load an HTML page in a div using JavaScript?

Javascript Problem Overview

I want home.html to load in <div id="content">.

<div id="topBar"> <a href ="#" onclick="load_home()"> HOME </a> </div>
<div id ="content"> </div>
<script>
      function load_home(){
            document.getElementById("content").innerHTML='<object type="type/html" data="home.html" ></object>';
  }
</script>

This works fine when I use Firefox. When I use Google Chrome, it asks for plug-in. How do I get it working in Google Chrome?

Javascript Solutions

Solution 1 - Javascript

I finally found the answer to my problem. The solution is

function load_home() {
     document.getElementById("content").innerHTML='<object type="text/html" data="home.html" ></object>';
}

Solution 2 - Javascript

You can use the jQuery load function:

<div id="topBar">
    <a href ="#" id="load_home"> HOME </a>
</div>
<div id ="content">        
</div>

<script>
$(document).ready( function() {
    $("#load_home").on("click", function() {
        $("#content").load("content.html");
    });
});
</script>

Sorry. Edited for the on click instead of on load.

Solution 3 - Javascript

Fetch API

function load_home (e) {
    (e || window.event).preventDefault();

    fetch("http://www.yoursite.com/home.html" /*, options */)
    .then((response) => response.text())
    .then((html) => {
        document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = html;
    })
    .catch((error) => {
        console.warn(error);
    });
}

XHR API

function load_home (e) {
  (e || window.event).preventDefault();
  var con = document.getElementById('content')
  ,   xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

  xhr.onreadystatechange = function (e) { 
    if (xhr.readyState == 4 && xhr.status == 200) {
      con.innerHTML = xhr.responseText;
    }
  }

  xhr.open("GET", "http://www.yoursite.com/home.html", true);
  xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-type', 'text/html');
  xhr.send();
}

based on your constraints you should use ajax and make sure that your javascript is loaded before the markup that calls the load_home() function

Reference - davidwalsh

MDN - Using Fetch

JSFIDDLE demo

Solution 4 - Javascript

Fetching HTML the modern Javascript way

This approach makes use of modern Javascript features like async/await and the fetch API. It downloads HTML as text and then feeds it to the innerHTML of your container element.

/**
  * @param {String} url - address for the HTML to fetch
  * @return {String} the resulting HTML string fragment
  */
async function fetchHtmlAsText(url) {
    return await (await fetch(url)).text();
}

// this is your `load_home() function`
async function loadHome() {
    const contentDiv = document.getElementById("content");
    contentDiv.innerHTML = await fetchHtmlAsText("home.html");
}

The await (await fetch(url)).text() may seem a bit tricky, but it's easy to explain. It has two asynchronous steps and you could rewrite that function like this:

async function fetchHtmlAsText(url) {
    const response = await fetch(url);
    return await response.text();
}

See the fetch API documentation for more details.

Solution 5 - Javascript

I saw this and thought it looked quite nice so I ran some tests on it.

It may seem like a clean approach, but in terms of performance it is lagging by 50% compared by the time it took to load a page with jQuery load function or using the vanilla javascript approach of XMLHttpRequest which were roughly similar to each other.

I imagine this is because under the hood it gets the page in the exact same fashion but it also has to deal with constructing a whole new HTMLElement object as well.

In summary I suggest using jQuery. The syntax is about as easy to use as it can be and it has a nicely structured call back for you to use. It is also relatively fast. The vanilla approach may be faster by an unnoticeable few milliseconds, but the syntax is confusing. I would only use this in an environment where I didn't have access to jQuery.

Here is the code I used to test - it is fairly rudimentary but the times came back very consistent across multiple tries so I would say precise to around +- 5ms in each case. Tests were run in Chrome from my own home server:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.1.4.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="content"></div>
    <script>
        /**
        * Test harness to find out the best method for dynamically loading a
        * html page into your app.
        */
        var test_times  = {};
        var test_page   = 'testpage.htm';
        var content_div = document.getElementById('content');

        // TEST 1 = use jQuery to load in testpage.htm and time it.
        /*
        function test_()
        {
            var start = new Date().getTime();
            $(content_div).load(test_page, function() {
                alert(new Date().getTime() - start);
            });
        }

        // 1044
        */

        // TEST 2 = use <object> to load in testpage.htm and time it.
        /*
        function test_()
        {
            start = new Date().getTime();
            content_div.innerHTML = '<object type="text/html" data="' + test_page +
            '" onload="alert(new Date().getTime() - start)"></object>'
        }

        //1579
        */

        // TEST 3 = use httpObject to load in testpage.htm and time it.
       function test_()
       {
           var xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();

           xmlHttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
                if (xmlHttp.readyState == 4 && xmlHttp.status == 200)
                {
                   content_div.innerHTML = xmlHttp.responseText;
                   alert(new Date().getTime() - start);
                }
            };

            start = new Date().getTime();

            xmlHttp.open("GET", test_page, true); // true for asynchronous
            xmlHttp.send(null);

            // 1039
        }

        // Main - run tests
        test_();
    </script>
</body>
</html>

Solution 6 - Javascript

try

async function load_home(){
  content.innerHTML = await (await fetch('home.html')).text();
}

async function load_home() {
  let url = 'https://kamil-kielczewski.github.io/fractals/mandelbulb.html'

  content.innerHTML = await (await fetch(url)).text();
}

<div id="topBar"> <a href="#" onclick="load_home()"> HOME </a> </div>
<div id="content"> </div>

Solution 7 - Javascript

When using

$("#content").load("content.html");

Then remember that you can not "debug" in chrome locally, because XMLHttpRequest cannot load -- This does NOT mean that it does not work, it just means that you need to test your code on same domain aka. your server

Solution 8 - Javascript

You can use the jQuery :

$("#topBar").on("click",function(){
        $("#content").load("content.html");
});

Solution 9 - Javascript

$("button").click(function() {
    $("#target_div").load("requesting_page_url.html");
});

document.getElementById("target_div").innerHTML='<object type="text/html" data="requesting_page_url.html"></object>';

Solution 10 - Javascript

<script>
var insertHtml = function (selector, argHtml) {
$(document).ready(function(){

    $(selector).load(argHtml);
 
});
var targetElem = document.querySelector(selector);
    targetElem.innerHTML = html;
};

var sliderHtml="snippets/slider.html";//url of slider html
var items="snippets/menuItems.html";
insertHtml("#main",sliderHtml);
insertHtml("#main2",items);
</script>

this one worked for me when I tried to add a snippet of HTML to my main.html. Please don't forget to add ajax in your code pass class or id as a selector and the link to the HTML snippet as argHtml

Solution 11 - Javascript

There is this plugin on github that load content into an element. Here is the repo

https://github.com/abdi0987/ViaJS

Solution 12 - Javascript

load html form a remote page ( where we have CORS access )
parse the result-html for a specific portion of the page
insert that part of the page in a div on current-page

//load page via jquery-ajax $.ajax({ url: "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17636528/how-do-i-load-an-html-page-in-a-div-using-javascript";, context: document.body }).done(function(data) {

//the previous request fails beceaus we dont have CORS on this url.... just for illlustration...

   //get a list of DOM-Nodes 
   var dom_nodes = $($.parseHTML(data));

  //find the question-header
   var content = dom_nodes.find('#question-header');

  //create a new div and set the question-header as it's content 
   var newEl = document.createElement("div");
  $(newEl).html(content.html());
   
  //on our page, insert it in div with id 'inserthere'
  $("[id$='inserthere']").append(newEl);
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<p>part-result from other page:</p>
<div id="inserthere"></div>

Solution 13 - Javascript

This is usually needed when you want to include header.php or whatever page.

In Javascript it's easy especially if you have HTML page and don't want to use php include function but at all you should write php function and add it as Javascript function in script tag.

In this case you should write it without function followed by name Just. Script rage the function word and start the include header.php i.e convert the php include function to Javascript function in script tag and place all your content in that included file.

Solution 14 - Javascript

Use this simple code

<div w3-include-HTML="content.html"></div>
<script>w3.includeHTML();</script>
</body>```

Solution 15 - Javascript

I use jquery, I found it easier

$(function() {
    $("#navigation").load("navbar.html");
});

in a separate file and then load javascript file on html page

Solution 16 - Javascript

showhide.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
      <script type="text/javascript">
        function showHide(switchTextDiv, showHideDiv)
        {
          var std = document.getElementById(switchTextDiv);
          var shd = document.getElementById(showHideDiv);
          if (shd.style.display == "block")
          {
            shd.style.display = "none";
            std.innerHTML = "<span style=\"display: block; background-color: yellow\">Show</span>"; 
          }
          else
          {
            if (shd.innerHTML.length <= 0)
            {
              shd.innerHTML = "<object width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\" type=\"text/html\" data=\"showhide_embedded.html\"></object>";
            }
            shd.style.display = "block";
            std.innerHTML = "<span style=\"display: block; background-color: yellow\">Hide</span>";
          }
        }
      </script>
    </head>
    <body>
      <a id="switchTextDiv1" href="javascript:showHide('switchTextDiv1', 'showHideDiv1')">
        <span style="display: block; background-color: yellow">Show</span>
      </a>
      <div id="showHideDiv1" style="display: none; width: 100%; height: 300px"></div>
    </body>
</html>

showhide_embedded.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
      <script type="text/javascript"> 
        function load()
        {
          var ts = document.getElementById("theString");
          ts.scrollIntoView(true);
        }
      </script>
    </head>
    <body onload="load()">
      <pre>
        some text 1
        some text 2
        some text 3
        some text 4
        some text 5
        <span id="theString" style="background-color: yellow">some text 6 highlight</span>
        some text 7
        some text 8
        some text 9
      </pre>
    </body>
</html>

Solution 17 - Javascript

If your html file resides locally then go for iframe instead of the

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Giliweed	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Javascript	Giliweed	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Javascript	Aaron Liske	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Javascript	Jay Harris	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Javascript	Lucio Paiva	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Javascript	Sam Redway	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Javascript	Kamil Kiełczewski	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Javascript	serup	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Javascript	Anup	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Javascript	Krishna pattar	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 10 - Javascript	Arshal_d	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 11 - Javascript	Abdullahi	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 12 - Javascript	womd	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 13 - Javascript	Creative87	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 14 - Javascript	Cak Sup	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 15 - Javascript	NMV	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 16 - Javascript	Rudolf Remšík	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 17 - Javascript	Jain Abhishek	View Answer on Stackoverflow