Home/ Questions/Q 6144331
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-23T18:38:05+00:00

I want to use jQuery to select every element that has a certain text

  • 0

I want to use jQuery to select every element that has a certain text string in it, but not the parents of that element. How do I do this? I have no control whatsoever over the HTML code, but here is an example:

<body>
<div>
<p>This is a paragraph and <a>this is not</a>.</p>
Here we have a div.
</div>
</body>

If I use the word “this” as my match word, I want jQuery to provide me with a set containing the <a> and the <p>, but not the <div> or the <body>.

Again, I have no control AT ALL over the HTML!

Thanks!

** Clarification: I do want the parent of the element if the parent ALSO has a “this” in its immediate text. Thus, I want the <a> AND the <p>.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Update::

    Here is what I came up with: jsfiddle

    var myArray = $('*:contains("this")','body').filter(function(){
    if($(this).contents().filter(function(){
        return(this.nodeType == 3);
    }).text().indexOf('this')===-1){
        return false;
    }
    return true;
});


$.each(myArray,function(){
   console.log(this.nodeName); 
});

    Starts similar to the link posted by Robin, but it forces to only search in the context of body elements – this keeps your scripts safe if they are not inline.

    The next part is a filter that checks to see if the current element direct text nodes contain the text.

    This is a bit convoluted, but to walk through it:

    .contents() – docs – gets the immediate nodes

    .filter() – docs – we want to only test on test nodes, so we filter them out

    this.nodeType – w3 spec – check to see if its a text node

    .test() – docs – gets a string of the text nodes.

    .indexOf() – check that string for our string

    Note I did the :contains() at the top and in the second filter, the first isn’t needed per say but I think the initial test should reduce the number of deeper tests and speed it up slightly.

    • 0