Question

I am trying to select an element in the list depending on its html content. I was hoping to do something like $('li[html="something"]'), but of course html isn’t an attribute. Is there an equivalent set based operation?

I could of course iterate all the elements in the list using $.each(), but it seems to me it will be quite a lot slower.

Answer 1

you could try the :contains() selector

http://api.jquery.com/contains-selector/

$("li:contains('something')")

For an exact match (from the link above):

$.expr[":"].contains = function(obj, index, meta, stack){
    return $.trim($(obj).html()) == meta[3];
}

Usage:

$("li:contains('john')")

This will only match <li>John</li>, not <li>A. John</li>, neither <li>John 6</li>… just <li>John</li>!