jQuery select text nodes and delete their content

Question

I was looking for an answer to this question, and I came up with this

stackoverflow - How do I select text nodes with jQuery?

Is there so far another way to do this ?? In my very case I'm trying to find every text node starting from a given DOM element and

empty()

it. Any suggestions ?

UPDATE - After a bit of messing I came up with this jsFiddle

Now the function selects each text node but instead of replacing only the empty ones with the new value given, it replaces all of them. What am I doing wrong ??

Answer 1

With reference to this 'Now the function selects each text node but instead of replacing only the empty ones with the new value given, it replaces all of them. What am I doing wrong ??'

What is required is that just test the nodeValue for whitespace using a regex and then on the basis of this proceed forward.

I have updated it like this and it works fine http://jsfiddle.net/Vj5LR/2/

$(document).ready(function(){

   var prova = ['1','2','3','4','5','6'];
   var regForNonWhiteSpace = /\S/; // non white space
   $('.example').find('*').each(function(){
       $(this).contents().filter(function(){
           //this.trim();
           if( this.nodeType === 3 && !regForNonWhiteSpace.test(this.nodeValue)){
               this.nodeValue = 'new value'; // only when there is no content at all
           }
       });
    });
});

Hope this solves the problem

Answer 2

empty() is used to empty the innerText of an element and does not apply to textNodes. Instead you need to use remove():

$('.example')
    .contents()
    .filter(function () {
    return this.nodeType === 3; //Node.TEXT_NODE
}).remove();

Example fiddle

Answer 3

$(document).ready(function(){

    var prova = ['1','2','3','4','5','6'];

    $('.example').find('*').each(function(){
        $(this).contents().filter(function(){
            //this.trim();
            if( this.nodeType === 3 && this.nodeValue.trim().length === 0){
                this.nodeValue = 'new value';
            }
        });
    });
});

http://jsfiddle.net/trevordowdle/RajB4/40/