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

This is an old question but the top answer is very inefficient. Here's a better solution:

$.fn.myText = function() {
    var str = '';

    this.contents().each(function() {
        if (this.nodeType == 3) {
            str += this.textContent || this.innerText || '';
        }
    });

    return str;
};

And just do this:

$("#foo").myText();