Retrieve label content in Jquery

Question

I am using JQuery for my application. In my code, I want to get only the text 'Firstname' in the label.

I tried it with

     $("#label"+div_id+"").html(); //but displays Firstname along with the span tag..

But I only need Firstname. How can i do so?

The following is my Html code

 <label id="label1">Firstname<span class="req"><em> * </em></span></label>

Answer 1

The general solution to this problem -- namely, getting immediate text but not child text -- is elem.clone().children().remove().end().text(); (where elem here is $("#label"+div_id)). This has the same result as karim79's solution but with the benefit of not breaking if other tags are added to the label.