Question

Here’s some example code:

<input type="checkbox" id="send-notice" name="send-notice" value="1" /> This is a notice to all users.  

<label for="subject">Subject</label>

I want to be able to select the text “This is a notice to all users.” so I can remove it.

I’m not sure how to do so though.

I’ve tried using jQuery('#send-notice').next(), but that selects the <label for="subject"> block.

I also tried wrapping a <div> around the text using jQuery('#send-notice').after() and a closing </div> tag on jQuery("label[for='subject']").before(). But jQuery doesn’t like unopened elements.

Any help here?

Answer 1

You want to operate on textnodes, and jQuery steers clear of textnodes. Since you can’t wrap the text you want to change in a span or something like that, you can, with some effort, identify the textnodes and do some surgery. This is thrown together quickly, but seems to work:

    /* utility function to help us skip whitespace-only nodes */    
    function isWhitespace( thenode ) {
        return !(/[^\t\n\r ]/.test( thenode.data ));
    }   

    /* attach this function to ready() or other trigger */
    function fixtext(){
        $('div#main')
            .contents()
            .filter( function() {
                return !isWhitespace(this) && this.nodeType == 3;
                // nodeType 3 means textNode. Force jQuery to ingest.
            })
            .each( function(){
                $(this).replaceWith( document.createTextNode('Your new text') );
            });
    }

This can certainly be reduced and streamlined, but it seems to work using the information in your question, and should give you a starting point on the approach. It doesn’t rely on matching your string exactly — just that the string will be positioned in some larger container (I have it as div#main here), and it won’t have any non-whitespace siblings. Even if your case is more complex, as long as the text is consistently placed you should be able to identify it within the filter() function.