[SOLVED] using document.createDocumentFragment() and innerHTML to manipulate a DOM

using document.createDocumentFragment() and innerHTML to manipulate a DOM

I'm creating a document fragment as follow:

var aWholeHTMLDocument = '<!doctype html> <html><head></head><body><h1>hello world</h1></body></html>';
var frag = document.createDocumentFragment();
frag.innerHTML = aWholeHTMLDocument;

The variable aWholeHTMLDocument contains a long string that is the entire html document of a page, and I want to insert it inside my fragment in order to generate and manipulate the DOM dynamically.

My question is, once I have added that string to frag.innerHTML, shouldn't it load this string and convert it to a DOM object?

After setting innerHTML, shouldn't I have access to the DOM through a property?

I tried frag.childNodes but it doesn't seem to contain anything, and all I want is to just access that newly created DOM.

Solution

You can't set the innerHTML of a document fragment like you would do with a normal node, that's the problem. Adding a standard div and setting the innerHTML of that is the common solution.