jQuery - Select everything except a single elements and its children?

Question

I\'m trying to remove everything in the whole body, except of a single element and its children. How can I accomplish this?

Edit 1 Consider the foll

Answer 1

 $("body > *").not("body > #elementtokeep").remove();

You can replace the not() part with whatever you want to keep

Answer 2

You can do it like this:

$('body > *:not(#dondelete)').remove();

Where your element has id="dondelete" and is a child of body.

Answer 3

This code worked for me.

$('body > * :not(#123)').remove()

You need to give space between * and : . Earlier when try to use the code with

$('body > *:not(#123)').remove() it did not work. I had to give space between * and : character.

Happy coding.

Answer 4

Try

$('body > *:not(#123)').remove()

http://api.jquery.com/not-selector/

Answer 5

This is an old question, but the accepted answer is wrong. It doesn't work in this situation (see http://jsfiddle.net/LVb3V/ ) and certainly not as a general solution.

Better to use:

$('body *').not('#div2, #div2 *').remove()​;

This will remove all elements in the body except for div2 and all the elements it contains.

Answer 6

I think that

$("body *").not("body #div2")
           .not("body #div2 #elementtokeep")
           .not("body #div2 #elementtokeep *")
           .remove();

is the easiest way to focus it.

http://jsfiddle.net/6vb2va6g/