Description
The jQuery.ajax docs contain the following two statements about the behaviour of the "html" dataType:
"html": Returns HTML as plain text; included script tags are evaluated _when inserted in the DOM_.
...
If html is specified, any embedded JavaScript inside the retrieved data is executed _before the HTML is returned_ as a string.
(emphasis mine).
Unless I am misinterpreting what I am reading, these statements directly contradict each other.
If I understand it correctly, the second statement means that if I send an ajax call to somefile.html and get a response of
<html>
<script>
alert('hello world');
</script>
</html>then I should see the alert immediately upon receiving the response, even if I never add the response text to the DOM. This does not in fact happen, at least in the versions of jQuery I tried (1.4.0 and 2.1.0). As far as I can tell, the second statement is thus simply false and should be removed.
My apologies if I have somehow misunderstood the second quoted sentence, which seems quite possible - the behaviour that I interpret it as describing would be rather bizarre if it were in fact implemented.