How to unwrap text using jQuery?

Question

How to unwrap a text from a HTML tag using jQUery?

For instance, how to transform this HTML

<p>A <i>sentence</i> with <b>bold words</b>.</p>

into (i.e. remove the bold tags)

<p>A <i>sentence</i> with bold words.</p>

using only jQuery and no regex?

Answer 1

How you do it depends on the additional constraints in your situation.

There's no general way to unbold.

If the tags are always <b>, then you can do this

var h = $(elementSelector).html;
h = h.replace("<b>","");
h = h.replace("</b>","");
$(elementSelector).html(h);

I'm not sure why you don't like Regex.

Answer 2

To unwrap only text and nothing else you could use:

$("b").replaceWith($("b").text());

Answer 3

You can do this:

  $("b").each(function() {
    $(this).replaceWith(this.childNodes);
  });

Note: this preserves whatever HTML you have inside where .text() might transform it.

If you wanted to quite literally just strip the <b></b> you can use Cheeso's answer a bit easier in jQuery 1.4+:

$("p").html(function(i,h){ return h.replace(/<b>/g,'').replace(/<\/b>/g,''); }); 

Answer 4

I think relying solely on jQuery in this case needlessly complicates things. It would be easier to use the replace method which accepts either a normal string or a regular expression.

Using regex is generally the way to go in this case, because you want multiple substitutions which have roughly the same pattern.