50

I want to dump the current DOM to a file and be able to view it offline. Essentially, I have an outdated version of a page that I would like to keep around for comparison. As soon as I close my browser, I'm going to lose it so I would like to save the DOM exactly as it is.

There is already an answer for doing this in Firefox but how do I do it in Chrome?

Improve this question
2

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
61

Using the Web Inspector (F12), go to the Elements tab, right click on the <html> tag in your code and select Copy->Copy outerHTML. Then paste that into a new file and save.

Improve this answer
Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

5 Comments

I did this at the time of posting but I think there was a reason this is not the perfect solution. I think I wanted to save event handlers on the DOM which the HTML dump does not do.
@styfle Not sure I understand this. When you hit F12 it is the rendered (correct wording?) HTML I see, not the base dump that 'View Page Source' will give you. I followed Damon's advice and got everything I needed (a select box populated by jquery). It is still a very clumsy approach, a simple Select All from the elements page would be much more intuitive.
Just "Copy" instead of "Copy as HTML" does the trick. Then just paste into Notepad.
This will indeed give you the GENERATED HTML, unlike the "save page as" menu entry which just gives you the SOURCE HTML, which doesn't help you in sites that use Ajax for content.
Outdated, no longer valid.
15

In Chrome Dev Tools Console, type document.documentElement.outerHTML (use the tab button for autocomplete to save keystrokes) and hit Enter to see the DOM text displayed. To copy it to your clipboard and paste it elsewhere, use copy(document.documentElement.outerHTML) instead.

Damon's answer is also good (in Dev Tools, click Elements, right click <html>, click Copy > Copy outerHTML), but I find the Console command easier.

Improve this answer

5 Comments

Of course, as styfle mentioned, this will not save the event handlers on the DOM.
I think this is innately better than my solution because it is very simple and will work in the browser as well as in code.
Thanks for the copy, I didn't know that, but the solution itself seems not to work. The problem for me is not the event handlers. It doesn't even save the elements' "html". E.g. if my original DOM was just <foo></foo> and then I added some stuff in this foo dom element, the document.documentElement.outerHTML will simply show <foo></foo> w/o its contents
I guess it's because the shadow dom, one has to watch for this
To state the (almost) obvious, this works in Firefox as well
12

Command line solution

This is easy to do with newer releases of Chrome:

google-chrome --headless --dump-dom 'http://www.yahoo.com'

(The OP may not have been looking for a command line solution but this search result appears high when searching so others might find it useful)

Original answer 2017

My favorite way to do this is:

docker run -it --rm --name chrome --shm-size=1024m --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN --entrypoint=/usr/bin/google-chrome-unstable yukinying/chrome-headless-browser --headless --disable-gpu --dump-dom https://www.facebook.com

If you're not familiar with how Docker works, be patient - the first time will be slow but subsequent invocations will be quick.

Other information

Tested on

Ubuntu 16

Linux intel-nuc 4.4.0-21-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 18 18:33:37 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Docker version:

Docker version 1.10.3, build 20f81dd

Mac OS X Sierra

Darwin MacBook-Pro.local 16.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 16.7.0: Thu Jun 15 17:36:27 PDT 2017; root:xnu-3789.70.16~2/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64 i386 MacBookPro14,3 Darwin

Docker version:

Docker version 17.06.1-ce, build 874a737

If you install tidy you can indent the HTML too.

Improve this answer

2 Comments

I don’t see anything wrong with that. Do you know what docker is?
The problem with the --dump-dom is that the question was how to save the current DOM, not the DOM you get on initial page load, which on modern websites is almost guaranteed completely different thanks to JS injecting a million things that are missing from the initial page load.
6

I am currently using version 53.0.2785.113 m of Chrome. The other answers no longer appear to be valid. To properly copy all child/descendant elements the user now has to right click on <html> then click "Expand All" before copying. Other wise you will not recursively copy all elements. A normal Ctrl+C will copy everything one <html> has been expanded.

Improve this answer

1 Comment

Beware also of the shadow dom, the copied contents won't 'pierce' it, one will have only <element-with-shadow-dom></element-with-shadow-dom> w/o its contents

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.