How to parse the data returned from a ajax function within jquery?

I'm using ajax to开发者_开发问答 return some data from my server. What I get is a data string object.

How can I parse this html object, so that I only get a part of this returned data?

Depends on the dataType. What kind of data do you expect to receive and which dataType do you specify in the jQuery .ajax() method?

If you specfiy json for instance, jQuery (since version 1.3.2 I guess) will try to parse the received data into a Javascript object. But in general, you can just modify the received data yourself with all String methods available.

$.ajax({
    url:  '...',
    dataType: 'text',
    success: function(data) {
        //var part = data.substring(0,8);
        $(data).find('#my_element');
    }
});

This would take only the first 8 characters from the received data. Another way is to apply a regular expression on your received data. All on you.

edit

Based on your comment: If your transfer a valid HTML chunk of data, you can just wrap that data into a jQuery contructor and use all methods available there, for instance .find()