Using text to retrieve only text not nested in child tags

Question

If I have html like this    lt li id  listItem  gt      This is some text      lt span id  firstSpan  gt First span text lt  span gt       lt span id  secondSpan  gt Second span text lt  span gt   lt  li gt    I m trying to use  text   to retrieve just the string  This is some text   but if I were to say     list-item   text    I get  This is some textFirst span textSecond span text    Is there a way to get  and possibly remove  via something like  text      just the free text within a tag  and not the text within its child tags   The HTML was not written by me  so this is what I have to work with  I know that it would be simple to just wrap the text in tags when writing the html  but again  the html is pre-written

User · Answer

I am not a jquery expert  but how about       listItem   children   first   text

User · Answer

Try this       listItem   not     listItem   children    text

User · Answer

I liked this reusable implementation based on the clone   method found here to get only the text inside the parent element    Code provided for easy reference       foo        clone        clone the element      children     select all the children      remove       remove all the children      end      again go back to selected element      text

User · Answer

This seems like a case of overusing jquery to me  The following will grab the text ignoring the other nodes   document getElementById  listItem   childNodes 0     You ll need to trim that but it gets you what you want in one  easy line   EDIT  The above will get the text node   To get the actual text  use this   document getElementById  listItem   childNodes 0  nodeValue

User · Answer

I came up with a specific solution that should be much more efficient than the cloning and modifying of the clone   This solution only works with the following two reservations  but should be more efficient than the currently accepted solution    You are getting only the text The text you want to extract is before the child elements   With that said  here is the code       element  is a jQuery element function getText element      var text   element text      var childLength   element children   text   length    return text slice 0  text length - childLength

User · Answer

This untested  but I think you may be able to try something like this        listItem   not  span   text      http   api jquery com not

User · Answer

jQuery fn ownText   function          return   this  contents   filter function              return this nodeType     Node TEXT NODE         text

User · Answer

Just like the question  I was trying to extract text in order to do some regex substitution of the text but was getting problems where my inner elements  ie   lt i gt    lt div gt    lt span gt   etc   were getting also removed   The following code seems to work well and solved all my problems   It uses some of the answers provided here but in particular  will only substitute the text when the element is of nodeType     3     el  contents   each function        console log    gt  Content   s   s    this   this nodeType     3       if  this nodeType     3        var text   this textContent      console log    gt  Old       s    text        regex   new RegExp            rule       val          g        text   text replace regex  value        regex   new RegExp            rule       act          g        text   text replace regex  actual        console log    gt  New       s    text       this textContent   text            What the above does is loop through all the elements of the given el  which was simply obtained with    div my-class name  some-name       For each inner element  it basically ignores them  For each portion of text  as determined by if  this nodeType     3   it will apply the regex substitution only to those elements   The this textContent   text portion simply replaces the substituted text  which in my case  I was looking for tokens like   min val      max val    etc   This short code excerpt will help anyone trying to do what the question was asking     and a bit more

User · Answer

listItem   contents   0   text     Short variant of Stuart answer   or with get          listItem   contents   get 0   text

User · Answer

If the position index of the text node is fixed among its siblings  you can use     parentselector   contents   eq index  text

User · Answer

This is an old question but the top answer is very inefficient  Here s a better solution     fn myText   function         var str            this contents   each function             if  this nodeType    3                str    this textContent    this innerText                               return str       And just do this       foo   myText

User · Answer

Easier and quicker       listItem   contents   get 0  nodeValue

User · Answer

It ll need to be something tailored to the needs  which are dependent on the structure you re presented with  For the example you ve provided  this works     document  ready function         var  tmp       listItem   children   remove             listItem   text     append  tmp         Demo  http   jquery nodnod net cases 2385 run  But it s fairly dependent on the markup being similar to what you posted

User · Answer

Simple answer       listItem   contents   filter function       return this nodeType    3      0  nodeValue    The text you want to replace with

User · Answer

I propose to use the createTreeWalker to find all texts elements not attached to html elements  this function can be used to extend jQuery     x000D   x000D  function textNodesOnlyUnder el    x000D    var resultSet       x000D    var n   null  x000D    var treeWalker    document createTreeWalker el  NodeFilter SHOW TEXT  function  node    x000D      if  node parentNode id    el id  amp  amp  node textContent trim   length    0    x000D        return NodeFilter FILTER ACCEPT  x000D        x000D      return NodeFilter FILTER SKIP  x000D       false   x000D    while  n   treeWalker nextNode      x000D      resultSet push n   x000D      x000D    return resultSet  x000D    x000D   x000D   x000D   x000D  window onload   function     x000D    var ele   document getElementById  listItem    x000D    var textNodesOnly   textNodesOnlyUnder ele   x000D    var resultingText   textNodesOnly map function val  index  arr    x000D      return  Text element N      index     -- gt      val textContent trim    x000D       join   n    x000D    document getElementById  txtArea   value   resultingText  x000D    x000D   lt li id  listItem  gt  x000D      This is some text x000D       lt span id  firstSpan  gt First span text lt  span gt  x000D       lt span id  secondSpan  gt Second span text lt  span gt  x000D   lt  li gt  x000D   lt textarea id  txtArea  style  width  400px height  200px   gt  lt  textarea gt  x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

This is a good way for me     var text         listItem   clone   children   remove   end   text

User · Answer

Not sure how flexible or how many cases you need it to cover  but for your example  if the text always comes before the first HTML tags     why not just split the inner html at the first tag and take the former       listItem   html   split   lt span   0      and if you need it wider maybe just       listItem   html   split   lt    0      and if you need the text between two markers  like after one thing but before another  you can do something like  untested  and use if statements to make it flexible enough to have a start or end marker or both  while avoiding null ref errors   var startMarker         put any starting marker here var endMarker     lt      put the end marker here var myText   String      listItem   html         if the start marker is found  take the string after it myText   myText split startMarker  1              if the end marker is found  take the string before it myText   myText split endMarker  0   console log myText      output text between the first occurrence of the markers  assuming both markers exist   If they don t this will throw an error  so some if statements to check params is probably in order      I generally make utility functions for useful things like this  make them error free  and then rely on them frequently once solid  rather than always rewriting this type of string manipulation and risking null references etc   That way  you can re-use the function in lots of projects and never have to waste time on it again debugging why a string reference has an undefined reference error   Might not be the shortest 1 line code ever  but after you have the utility function  it is one line from then on   Note most of the code is just handling parameters being there or not to avoid errors     For example         Get the text between two string markers      function textBetween   string   startMark   endMark       var hasText   typeof   string      undefined   amp  amp    string length  gt  0      if  hasText  return   string      var myText   String    string        var hasStartMarker   typeof   startMark      undefined   amp  amp    startMark length  gt  0  amp  amp    string indexOf   startMark  gt  0      var hasEndMarker    typeof   endMark      undefined   amp  amp    endMark length  gt  0  amp  amp    string indexOf   endMark   gt  0      if  hasStartMarker    myText   myText split   startMark  1       if  hasEndMarker      myText   myText split   endMark  0       return myText        now with 1 line from now on  and no jquery needed really  but to use your example  var textWithNoHTML   textBetween      listItem   html          lt        should return text before first child HTML tag if the text is on page  use document ready etc

User · Answer

isn t the code   var text         listItem   clone   children   remove   end   text      just becoming jQuery for jQuery s sake  When simple operations involve that many chained commands  amp  that much  unnecessary  processing  perhaps it is time to write a jQuery extension    function           function elementText el  separator            var textContents               for var chld   el firstChild  chld  chld   chld nextSibling                if  chld nodeType    3                     textContents push chld nodeValue                                   return textContents join separator               fn textNotChild   function elementSeparator  nodeSeparator        if  arguments length lt 2  nodeSeparator          if  arguments length lt 1  elementSeparator              return   map this  function el               return elementText el nodeSeparator              join elementSeparator            jQuery      to call   var text       listItem   textNotChild      the arguments are in case a different scenario is encountered  such as   lt li gt some text lt a gt more text lt  a gt again more lt  li gt   lt li gt second text lt a gt more text lt  a gt again more lt  li gt   var text      li   textNotChild           lt break gt       text will have value   some text lt break gt again more     second text lt break gt again more

User · Answer

just put it in a  lt p gt  or  lt font gt  and grab that     listItem font   text    First thing that came to mind   lt li id  listItem  gt       lt font gt This is some text lt  font gt       lt span id  firstSpan  gt First span text lt  span gt       lt span id  secondSpan  gt Second span text lt  span gt   lt  li gt

User · Answer

You can try this  alert document getElementById  listItem   firstChild data

User · Answer

I presume this would be a fine solution also - if you want to get contents of all text nodes that are direct children of selected element     selector  contents   filter function    return this nodeType    3     text      Note  jQuery documentation uses similar code to explain contents function  https   api jquery com contents   P S  There s also a bit uglier way to do that  but this shows more in depth how things work  and allows for custom separator between text nodes  maybe you want a line break there     selector  contents   filter function    return this nodeType    3     map function     return this nodeValue     toArray   join

User · Answer

Use an extra condition to check if innerHTML and innerText are the same  Only in those cases  replace the text     function        body     each function          console log   this  html         console log   this  text         if   this  text        Search   amp  amp    this  html       this  text                 this  html  Find                  http   jsfiddle net 7RSGh

User · Answer

Using plain JavaScript in IE 9  compatible syntax in just a few lines  let children   document querySelector   listItem   childNodes   if  children length  gt  0        childrenLoop      for  var i   0  i  lt  children length  i                only target text nodes  nodeType of 3          if  children i  nodeType     3                  do not target any whitespace in the HTML             if  children i  nodeValue trim   length  gt  0                    children i  nodeValue    Replacement text                     optimized to break out of the loop once primary text node found                 break childrenLoop

User · Answer

Similar to the accepted answer  but without cloning       foo   contents   not     foo   children    text      And here is a jQuery plugin for this purpose     fn immediateText   function         return this contents   not this children    text         Here is how to use this plugin       foo   immediateText       get the text without children

User · Answer

To be able to trim the result  use DotNetWala s like so       foo        clone        clone the element      children     select all the children      remove       remove all the children      end      again go back to selected element      text        trim      I found out that using the shorter version like document getElementById  listItem   childNodes 0  won t work with jQuery s trim

[jquery] Using .text() to retrieve only text not nested in child tags

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