Question

I’ve got content coming back from a webservice I cannot modify that returns data such as:

<div id="entrance" style="">
    Habilitação / Diploma de Ensino Medio Diploma de Ensino Pre Universitario 
    <br>
    <br>
    Diploma Record of study 
</div>

How can I wrap the two sentences in separate < p > tags using jQuery? I know I could use .wrap but that would wrap the entire contents. Do I need a RegEx?

Thanks,
Thomas

UPDATE:

My requirements changed to needing a list instead of paragraphs so using the answer below, I modified it slightly to wrap in < li > and then the whole thing in a < ul >

jQuery('#entrance').show();
jQuery('#entrance').html(data).contents().each(function () {
if ( this.nodeType === 3 ) jQuery( this ).wrap( '<li />' );
    else jQuery( this ).remove();
});
jQuery('#entrance').wrapInner('<ul />');

Answer 1

How about:

$( '#entrance' ).contents().each(function () {
    if ( this.nodeType === 3 && $.trim( this.data ) !== '' ) {
        $( this ).wrap( '<p />' );
    } else {
        $( this ).remove();
    }
});

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/ZMD6m/5/

My code transforms all non-empty text-nodes to paragraphs containing that text. All other types of nodes are removed.