Question

I would like to update the following:

<a data-fb="4dfsdgdsgsdfgsdfgcf08" class="fb-like" href="#">
<span class="like-icon">Likes:</span> 10</a>

I wish to update the value ’10’ with a result returned from a web service, I have the result stored in a variable called fbNumber. The data-fb attribute is unique so I wish to search for this and update the value.

Answer 1

A simple .replace seems to be sufficient here. You can get the current contents using the .html method, and replace any sequence of numbers found within with your new number:

var fbNumber = 23;

$("a[data-fb='4dfsdgdsgsdfgsdfgcf08']").html(function(i,v){
    return v.replace( /([0-9]+)/, fbNumber );
});​​​​​

Fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/GbqJg/