How do I select text nodes with jQuery?

Question

I would like to get all descendant text nodes of an element, as a jQuery collection. What is the best way to do that?

Answer 1

If you can make the assumption that all children are either Element Nodes or Text Nodes, then this is one solution.

To get all child text nodes as a jquery collection:

$('selector').clone().children().remove().end().contents();

To get a copy of the original element with non-text children removed:

$('selector').clone().children().remove().end();