Home/ Questions/Q 7162043
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-28T13:40:10+00:00

The tricky part is not selecting the elements here, but just selecting the text

  • 0

The tricky part is not selecting the elements here, but just selecting the text within. The only true jQuery that will give you back text contents is .contents(). So I’m getting the contents of every element not he page, and I want to pick out a word, such as “hashtag”. Then append to it.

What am I doing wrong here:

<html>
<p>
The word hashtag is in this sentence.
</p>
</html>

jQuery:

$(function() {
    $('*')
        .contents()
        .filter(function(){
            return this.nodeType === 3;
        })
        .filter(function(){
            return this.nodeValue.indexOf('hashtag') != -1;
        })
        .each(function(){
            alert("It works!")
        });
});

$('*') grabs every element

.contents() grabs the contents of every element

.filter(function(){ return this.noteType === 3; refines it down to the text contents of elements. (#3 node type is text)

return this.nodeValue.indexOf('hashtag') should grab the word “hashtag”. Not sure if this is working.

!= -1; should prevent it from grabbing every single element in the HTML. Not sure about that one.

Why doesn’t it work? I know I have anything appending tags yet, but can I select the word “hashtag” thanks!

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you want to do this for the whole page you can work on the HTML of the body element:

    $(function() {
    var regExp = new RegExp("\\b(" + "hashtag" + ")\\b", "gm");
    var html = $('body').html();
    $('body').html(html.replace(regExp, "<a href='#'>$1</a>"));
});

    Keep in mind that this may be slow if your page is large. Also, all elements will be rewritten and thus loose their event handlers etc.

    If you don’t want this or want to restrict the replacement to certain elements, you can select and iterate over them:

    $(function() {
    var regExp = new RegExp("\\b(" + "hashtag" + ")\\b", "gm");
    $('div, p, span').each(function() {  // use your selector of choice here
        var html = $(this).html();
        $(this).html(html.replace(regExp, "<a href='#'>$1</a>"));
    });
});
    • 0