Jquery – Find a string of text in an element and wrap some span tags round it

jQuery has the contains method. Here's a snippet for you:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
    var foundin = $('*:contains("I am a simple string")');
});
</script>

The selector above selects any element that contains the target string. The foundin will be a jQuery object that contains any matched element. See the API information at: https://api.jquery.com/contains-selector/

One thing to note with the '*' wildcard is that you'll get all elements, including your html an body elements, which you probably don't want. That's why most of the examples at jQuery and other places use $('div:contains("I am a simple string")')

I liked this reusable implementation based on the clone() method found here to get only the text inside the parent element.

Code provided for easy reference:

$("#foo")
    .clone()    //clone the element
    .children() //select all the children
    .remove()   //remove all the children
    .end()  //again go back to selected element
    .text();