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

To be able to trim the result, use DotNetWala's like so:

$("#foo")
    .clone()    //clone the element
    .children() //select all the children
    .remove()   //remove all the children
    .end()  //again go back to selected element
    .text()
    .trim();

I found out that using the shorter version like document.getElementById("listItem").childNodes[0] won't work with jQuery's trim().