Question

I need to get content from a UL list and then be able to use that to email. But I’m stuck on getting the ul list in jquery. I’ve searched and found the following:

$(document).ready(function(){
    $("#send").click(function() { //When trigger is clicked...
            var optionTexts = [];
            $("#thelist").each(function() { optionTexts.push($(this).text()) });
            var text = '"' + optionTexts.join('"<br/> "') + '"';

            $("#result").append(text);

        });
    });

but this returns all contents inside the page :S
Here’s my ul list:

<ul id="thelist">
  <li style="height: 65px; display: list-item; ">
    <ul>
      <li class="botHeader">
        "Evelin dice"
                <span>14:37:52</span>
      </li>
      <li class="botMsg">
        "Hola, bienvenido"
      </li>
    <ul>
  </li>
  <li style="height: 26px; display: list-item; ">
    <ul>
      <li class="userHeader">
        "Usted dice"
                <span>14:37:59</span>
      </li>
      <li class="userMsg">
        "Hola como estas"
      </li>
    <ul>
  </li>
  <li style="height: 39px; display: list-item; ">
    <ul>
      <li class="botHeader">
        "Evelin dice"
                <span>14:37:59</span>
      </li>
      <li class="botMsg">
        "Gracias por preguntar, todo bien"
      </li>
    <ul>
  </li>
</ul>

<a href="#" id="send">enviar</a>
<div id="result">

</div>

Answer 1

This should do the whole lot in one go, and without any temporary variables:

$('#result').append(
    $('#thelist').find('li').filter(function() {
        return $(this).find('ul').length === 0;
    }).map(function(i, e) {
        return $(this).text();
    }).get().join('<br/>')
);

You have to only consider the <li> elements that don’t have any <ul> descendents.

Working demo at http://jsfiddle.net/alnitak/JVS7d/