You can use your standard selector syntax, and pass in the data
as the context for the selector. The second parameter, data
in this case, is our context.
$.post("getstuff.php", function(data){
var mainDiv = $("#mainDiv", data); // finds <div id='mainDiv'>...</div>
}, "html");
This is equivalent to doing:
$(data).find("#mainDiv");
Depending on how you’re planning on using this, $.load()
may be a better route to take, as it allows both a URL and a selector to filter the resulting data, which is passed directly into the element the method was called on:
$("#mylocaldiv").load("getstuff.php #mainDiv");
This would load the contents of <div id='mainDiv'>...</div>
in getstuff.php
into our local page element <div id='mylocaldiv'>...</div>
.