jQuery change child text

Question

I have a jquery function that changes a text inside a element using a jquery "text" function. Inside this td element is child "a" tag like this.

<td class="v3"><a href="somelink">text to change</a>

The text to change is identified by the td class. When I change the text I lose the link. Question is how do I change the text using the parent element without touching the child (a href)?

Thanx

Answer 1

If you have:

<td class="v3">
     <a href="somelink">text to change</a>
</td> 

Then in your function you should have something like this:

$("td.v3").children("a").text("new text");

However, this will select all links that are direct children of tds with class .v3. Adding a .first() after children should help:

$("td.v3").children("a").first().text("new text");

Answer 2

Wrap the text in a span element, and change the text in the span.

<div id="foo">
    <span>bar</span>
    <a href="#">link</a>
</div>

...

$('#foo span').text('new text');

Edit:

Or use $('td.v3 a').text("new text") to change the text in the anchor, if that's what you want to do.