jQuery to select elements based on the text inside them

Question

How to select a tag having a specific text inside it and nothing else? For example if I have the following:

<table>
    <tr>
       <td>Assets</td><td>Asset</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
       <td>Play</td><td>Players</td><td>Plays</td>
    </tr>
</table>

Is there any way that I may select the <td>Asset</td> and nothing else. I tried it with contains i.e. $("table tr td:contains(Play)") but it returns all the tds in the second tr (as it should). Whereas I just want <td>Play</td>.

Is there any way to achieve this, like there's a way to select elements based on their attributes. Is there any way to select elements based on the text inside them?

Answer 1

How about that:

var lookup = 'Asset';
$('td:contains('+ lookup +')').filter(function() {
    return $(this).text() === lookup;
});

Demo

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