Find text string using jQuery

Question

Say a web page has a string such as  I am a simple string  that I want to find  How would I go about this using JQuery

User · Answer

This will select just the leaf elements that contain "I am a simple string".

$('*:contains("I am a simple string")').each(function(){
     if($(this).children().length < 1) 
          $(this).css("border","solid 2px red") });

Paste the following into the address bar to test it.

javascript: $('*:contains("I am a simple string")').each(function(){ if($(this).children().length < 1) $(this).css("border","solid 2px red") }); return false;

If you want to grab just "I am a simple string". First wrap the text in an element like so.

$('*:contains("I am a simple string")').each(function(){
     if($(this).children().length < 1) 
          $(this).html( 
               $(this).text().replace(
                    /"I am a simple string"/
                    ,'<span containsStringImLookingFor="true">"I am a simple string"</span>' 
               )  
           ) 
});

and then do this.

$('*[containsStringImLookingFor]').css("border","solid 2px red");

User · Answer

Just adding to Tony Miller s answer as this got me 90  towards what I was looking for but still didn t work  Adding  length  gt  0  to the end of his code got my script working      function         var foundin        contains  I am a simple string     length  gt  0

User · Answer

jQuery has the contains method   Here s a snippet for you    lt script type  text javascript  gt    function         var foundin        contains  I am a simple string           lt  script gt    The selector above selects any element that contains the target string   The foundin will be a jQuery object that contains any matched element   See the API information at  https   api jquery com contains-selector   One thing to note with the     wildcard is that you ll get all elements  including your html an body elements  which you probably don t want   That s why most of the examples at jQuery and other places use    div contains  I am a simple string

User · Answer

this function should work   basically does a recursive lookup till we get a distinct list of leaf nodes   function distinctNodes search  element        var d  e  ef      e           ef            if  element            d       contains      search        not script    element             else               d       contains      search        not script                if  d length    1                e push d 0              else           d each function                  var i  r   distinctNodes search  this               if  r length     0                    e push this                             else                   for  i   0  i  lt  r length    i                        e push r i                                                            each e  function              for  var i   0  i  lt  ef length    i                if  this     ef i   return                    ef push this               return ef

User · Answer

Normally jQuery selectors do not search within the  text nodes  in the DOM  However if you use the  contents   function  text nodes will be included  then you can use the nodeType property to filter only the text nodes  and the nodeValue property to search the text string                body            andSelf            contents            filter function                return this nodeType     3                      filter function                   Only match when contains  simple string  anywhere in the text             return this nodeValue indexOf  simple string      -1                      each function                   Do something with this nodeValue

User · Answer

If you just want the node closest to the text you re searching for  you could use this        contains  my text   last      This will even work if your HTML looks like this    lt p gt  blah blah  lt strong gt my  lt em gt text lt  em gt  lt  strong gt  lt  p gt    Using the above selector will find the  lt strong gt  tag  since that s the last tag which contains that entire string

User · Answer

Take a look at highlight  jQuery plugin

[jquery] Find text string using jQuery?

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