Find text string using jQuery?

Question

Say a web page has a string such as \"I am a simple string\" that I want to find. How would I go about this using JQuery?

Answer 1

this function should work. basically does a recursive lookup till we get a distinct list of leaf nodes.

function distinctNodes(search, element) {
    var d, e, ef;
    e = [];
    ef = [];

    if (element) {
        d = $(":contains(\""+ search + "\"):not(script)", element);
    }
    else {
            d = $(":contains(\""+ search + "\"):not(script)");
    }

    if (d.length == 1) {
            e.push(d[0]);
    }
    else {
        d.each(function () {
            var i, r = distinctNodes(search, this);
            if (r.length === 0) {
                e.push(this);
            }
            else {
                for (i = 0; i < r.length; ++i) {
                    e.push(r[i]);
                }
            }
        });
    }
    $.each(e, function () {
        for (var i = 0; i < ef.length; ++i) {
            if (this === ef[i]) return;
        }
        ef.push(this);
    });
    return ef;
}

Answer 2

If you just want the node closest to the text you're searching for, you could use this:

$('*:contains("my text"):last');

This will even work if your HTML looks like this:

<p> blah blah <strong>my <em>text</em></strong></p>

Using the above selector will find the <strong> tag, since that's the last tag which contains that entire string.

Answer 3

Take a look at highlight (jQuery plugin).

Answer 4

Just adding to Tony Miller's answer as this got me 90% towards what I was looking for but still didn't work. Adding .length > 0; to the end of his code got my script working.

 $(function() {
    var foundin = $('*:contains("I am a simple string")').length > 0;
 });

Answer 5

jQuery has the contains method. Here's a snippet for you:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
    var foundin = $('*:contains("I am a simple string")');
});
</script>

The selector above selects any element that contains the target string. The foundin will be a jQuery object that contains any matched element. See the API information at: https://api.jquery.com/contains-selector/

One thing to note with the '*' wildcard is that you'll get all elements, including your html an body elements, which you probably don't want. That's why most of the examples at jQuery and other places use $('div:contains("I am a simple string")')

Answer 6

This will select just the leaf elements that contain "I am a simple string".

$('*:contains("I am a simple string")').each(function(){
     if($(this).children().length < 1) 
          $(this).css("border","solid 2px red") });

Paste the following into the address bar to test it.

javascript: $('*:contains("I am a simple string")').each(function(){ if($(this).children().length < 1) $(this).css("border","solid 2px red") }); return false;

If you want to grab just "I am a simple string". First wrap the text in an element like so.

$('*:contains("I am a simple string")').each(function(){
     if($(this).children().length < 1) 
          $(this).html( 
               $(this).text().replace(
                    /"I am a simple string"/
                    ,'<span containsStringImLookingFor="true">"I am a simple string"</span>' 
               )  
           ) 
});

and then do this.

$('*[containsStringImLookingFor]').css("border","solid 2px red");