I can't even get $().text to work properly. Outputs a massive string of code instead

Question

I've set up a test so I can begin using jQuery in a cakePHP environment but I'm having a problem before I've even started.

I have twitter bootstrap also but when I had this problem I turned everything off to make sure it wasn't that. It wasn't.

I'm testing this in Chrome & Waterfox.

When I tried to $('#test').html('Hello'); I didn't get anything. So I tried alerting something out using the following:

$(document).ready(function() {

    $('#test').click(function() {
        alert($('#test').text);
    });
});

and

<span id="test">test span</span>

Which gives me the result:

function (a){return f.access(this,function(a){return a===b?f.text(this):this.empty().append((this[0]&&this[0].ownerDocument||c).createTextNode(a))},null,a,arguments.length)}

Could someone please tell me what the hell that is please and why didn't I get 'test span'. Thank you :)

Answer 1

'text' is a function, the code of which you are outputting

Just call it like any function

alert($('#test').text());

Answer 2

jQuery.text() is a function, not a property. Here is how you use it:

var a = $('#test').text(); // getter
$('#test').text(a);        // setter

Note: consider using jQuery.html() if you plan to inject fragments of HTML.