jquery find and replace text, without element id

Question

I'm playing around with finding and replacing text.

The only problem I'm having is finding a text string, that is not attached to an element with an ID. Otherwise, it would be easy.

I'm trying something like this:

$("*").each(function () {
    $(this).html(this.html().replace('Original Text','New Text'));
});

Not working too well.
Anyone run into this before?

Also, if I have several words or phrases to find and replace, how does that affect the speed/processing power of the user's browser? Is it a memory hog?

Answer 1

You want the :contains() selector. http://api.jquery.com/contains-selector/

$("*:contains('Original Text')").each(...);

Answer 2

$("*").contents().each(function() {
    if(this.nodeType == 3)
        this.nodeValue = this.nodeValue.replace("old", "new");
});

Answer 3

why don't you simply use:

$('body').html($('body').html().replace('Original Text','New Text'));

Answer 4

Takpar, your code works too. It seems to stop a few other things from working, but only items I'm pulling dynamically. For example, when I'm using .ajax(). Not sure why, but that's why I ran into. I'll test more.

On a related topic, Gumbo's code works:

$("*").each(function () { if ($(this).children().length == 0) { $(this).text($(this).text().replace('Subject:','Name:')); } });

The only thing I'm running into issues with is replacing text that is loaded after the page loads.

I do have some javascript functions that are displaying data from the server, but only after the page has loaded all elements. For example, a user selects a value from a dropdown that initiates an event to load a list of products from the database.

I format some of those products like this:

Granny Smith Apples Price: x.xx per pound Nutritional facts....

I will only want to find a replace the word "Price:", and possibly replace it with "Cost:".

But as I mentioned, that data has not been loaded yet.

Is a limit I have to live with?