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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-01T01:51:48+00:00

How do I get the text of an element without the children? Neither element.textContent

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How do I get the text of an element without the children?
Neither element.textContent nor element.innerText seem to be working.

HTML:

<body>
<h1>Test Heading</h1>
<div>
Awesome video and music. Thumbs way up. Love it. Happy weekend to you and your family. Love, Sasha
</div>
</body>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    fool("body");
</script>

and here’s the fool function:

jQuery.fn.justtext = function(text) {
    return $(this).clone()
    .children()
    .remove()
    .end()
    .text();
};

function fool(el) { 

    reverse(el);

    function reverse(el) {
        $(el).children().each(function() {
            if($(this).children().length > 0) {
                reverse(this);
                if($(this).justtext() != "")
                    reverseText(this);
            } else {
               reverseText(this)
            }
        });
    }

    function reverseText(el){
        var text = el.textContent;
        var frag = text.toString().split(/ /);
        var foo = "";
        var punctation_marks = [".",",","?","!"," ",":",";"];
        for(i in frag){
            if(punctation_marks.indexOf(frag[i]) == -1)
                foo += actualReverse(frag[i],punctation_marks) + " ";
        }
        el.textContent = foo;
    }

    function actualReverse(text,punctation_marks) {
        return (punctation_marks.indexOf(text.split("")[text.split("").length-1]) != -1)?text.split("").slice(0,text.split("").length-1).reverse().join("") + text.split("")[text.split("").length-1] : text.split("").reverse().join("");
    }
}

edit: using node.nodeType doesn’t really help and here’s why:
Imaginge the following HTML

<td class="gensmall">
    Last visit was: Sat Mar 31, 2012 10:50 am
    <br>
    <a href="./search.php?search_id=unanswered">View unanswered posts</a> | <a href="./search.php?search_id=active_topics">View active topics</a>
</td>

if I’d use nodeType, only the text of the a element would change , but not the td itself (“last visit….”)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Just find the text nodes:

    var element = document.getElementById('whatever'), text = '';
for (var i = 0; i < element.childNodes.length; ++i)
  if (element.childNodes[i].nodeType === Node.TEXT_NODE)
    text += element.childNodes[i].textContent;

    edit — if you want the text in descendant (“children”) nodes, and (as is now apparent) you’re using jQuery:

    $.fn.allText = function() {
  var text = '';
  this.each(function() {
    $(this).contents().each(function() {
      if (this.nodeType == Node.TEXT_NODE)
        text += this.textContent;
      else if (this.nodeType == Node.ELEMENT_NODE)
        text += $(this).allText();
    });
  });
  return text;
};

    Hold on and I’ll test that out 🙂 (seems to work)

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