Question

Trying to get the very first text node.

var s = $.trim('login<tbody> <tr> <td class="translated">Lorem ipsum dummy text</td></tr><tr><td class="translated">This is a new paragraph</td></tr><tr><td class="translated"><b>Email</b></td></tr><tr><td><i>This is yet another text</i></td> </tr></tbody>');

if($(s).find('*').andSelf().not('b,i').length > 1){
    alert($(s).find('*:not(:empty)').first().text());
}

Here is a link to what i am doing on jsfiddle

It is not giving me the very first text node which is “login” rather it is givig me
“lorem ipsum…” which is 2nd text node.

NOTE:

The HTML string is dynamic so do not think of assigning class or id to it or enclosing it in some HTML element or substring etc.

Answer 1

If your HTML is already a string, I would just use substring() to get all characters leading up to the first angled bracket:

var s = $.trim('login<tbody> <tr> <td class="translated">Lorem ipsum dummy text</td></tr><tr><td class="translated">This is a new paragraph</td></tr><tr><td class="translated"><b>Email</b></td></tr><tr><td><i>This is yet another text</i></td> </tr></tbody>');

s.substring(0, s.indexOf('<'));
// "login"

Update

This will find the first text node if it’s not at the beginning or undefined if there are no text nodes:

$(s).contents().filter(function() { return this.nodeType == 3 })[0]

Update 2

This could also work, though I haven’t looked closely at the repercussions of doing it:

$(s).find('*').contents().filter(function() { return this.nodeType == 3})[0]