Question

.html() function on class selector ($('.class').html()) applies only to the first element that matches it. I’d like to get a value of all elements with class .class.

Answer 1

You are selection all elements with class .class but to gather all html content you need to walk trough all of them:

var fullHtml;

$('.class').each(function() {
   fullHtml += $(this).html();
});

search items by containig text inside of it:

$('.class:contains("My Something to search")').each(function() {
   // do somethign with that
});

Code: http://jsfiddle.net/CC2rL/1/