I want to use $('body:contains("")') for searching part of a html code.

For example:

var thing = $('body:contains("Web</a></td></tr>")').text()
    if(thing) {
        alert(thing);
    }
else{
    alert("not found")
        }

This code always alerts "not found".

Is it possible to search a part of a html code and alert if found?

Thank you...

I want to use $('body:contains("")') for searching part of a html code.

For example:

var thing = $('body:contains("Web</a></td></tr>")').text()
    if(thing) {
        alert(thing);
    }
else{
    alert("not found")
        }

This code always alerts "not found".

Is it possible to search a part of a html code and alert if found?

Thank you...

• javascript
• jquery
• firefox

• 1 Beware that you may see "Web</a></td></tr>", when inspecting with your browser, but the actual code may contain whitespace or not even have closing tags! Even if the source is "Web</a></td></tr>" now, stuff like that can break very easily on pages that you do not control. – Brock Adams Commented Jul 17, 2011 at 0:11

3 Answers 3

You can't use selectors to look for HTML fragments, as no element contains the HTML fragment as text.

You can put the elements in the selector as elements, and look only for the text part of your HTML fragement:

var thing = $('body tr > td > a:contains("Web")').text();

:contains() searches text, not markup. To find an element whose HTML contents (innerHTML) includes a given string, you can use .filter() like:

$('body').filter(function() {
    return this.innerHTML.indexOf('Web</a></td></tr>') > -1;
});

:contains doesn't check html. You could instead do:

if (document.body.innerHTML.indexOf('Web</a></td></tr>') > -1) {
    // whatever
}