jQuery + client-side template = "Syntax error, unrecognized expression"

Turns out string starting with a newline (or anything other than "<") is not considered HTML string in jQuery 1.9

I guess your template is starting with a space or a tab.

You can use jQuery like that:

$($.parseHtml(modal_template_html)[1]);

or parse the string to remove spaces of the beginning:

$(modal_template_html.replace(/^[ \t]+/gm, ''));

javascript jquery mustache

EugeneXa mentioned it in a comment, but it deserves to be an answer:

var template = $("#modal_template").html().trim();

This trims the offending whitespace from the beginning of the string. I used it with Mustache, like so:

var markup = Mustache.render(template, data);$(markup).appendTo(container);

CodeHunter