Using .text() to retrieve only text not nested in child tags

Question

If I have html like this:

    This is some text
    First span text
    

        

Answer 1

isn't the code:

var text  =  $('#listItem').clone().children().remove().end().text();

just becoming jQuery for jQuery's sake? When simple operations involve that many chained commands & that much (unnecessary) processing, perhaps it is time to write a jQuery extension:

(function ($) {
    function elementText(el, separator) {
        var textContents = [];
        for(var chld = el.firstChild; chld; chld = chld.nextSibling) {
            if (chld.nodeType == 3) { 
                textContents.push(chld.nodeValue);
            }
        }
        return textContents.join(separator);
    }
    $.fn.textNotChild = function(elementSeparator, nodeSeparator) {
    if (arguments.length<2){nodeSeparator="";}
    if (arguments.length<1){elementSeparator="";}
        return $.map(this, function(el){
            return elementText(el,nodeSeparator);
        }).join(elementSeparator);
    }
} (jQuery));

to call:

var text = $('#listItem').textNotChild();

the arguments are in case a different scenario is encountered, such as

some textmore textagain more
second textmore textagain more

var text = $("li").textNotChild(".....","");

text will have value:

some textagain more.....second textagain more