Grouping list items (LIs) to OLs/ULs using jQuery

Question

Is it possible, using Javascript and either jQuery or regular expressions, to group multiple sibling list items in HTML as in the example below? I need to convert TikiWiki markup to HTML, and it uses ungrouped lists (just adjacent lines appended with #).

<li>Item 1.1</li>
<li>Item 1.2</li>
<li>Item 1.3</li>
<p>Paragraph</p>
<li>Item 2.1</li>
<li>Item 2.2</li>

To this:

<ul>
<li>Item 1.1</li>
<li>Item 1.2</li>
<li>Item 1.3</li>
</ul>
<p>Paragraph</p>
<ul>
<li>Item 2.1</li>
<li>Item 2.2</li>
</ul>

I already tried using $("li").wrapAll() and siblings(). Both failed.

There's another approach. Here's the regex I'm currently using to convert TikiWiki lists to HTML list items: replace(/[#](.*)\n?/g, "<li class='numbered'>$1</li>") Is it possible to match repeated patterns, and convert them accordingly to HTML as in this pseudo regex? replace(/repeat([#](.*)\n?)/g, "<ol>foreach(<li class='numbered'>$1</li>)</ol>")

Answer 1

Here is my first hack at it. this might get you going in the right direction

    <div id='testList'>
        <li>Item 1.1</li>
        <li>Item 1.2</li>
        <li>Item 1.3</li>
        <p>Paragraph</p>
        <li>Item 2.1</li>
        <li>Item 2.2</li>

    </div>

<script language='javascript' type='text/javascript'>

$.fn.tagName = function() {
    return this.get(0).tagName;
}

$(document).ready(function() {

    alert($("#testList").html());

    $("li").each(function() {
        if ( $(this).parent().tagName() != "UL" ) {
            $(this).wrap("<ul></ul>");
            // alert($(this).parent().tagName())
        }
    })

    alert($("#testList").html());
});
</script>

Answer 2

The <p> is just hanging out in the middle of a bunch of <li>s, signifying the beginning or end of a group? Then maybe something like this:

​$('div#container') // assume you're got it in a container div
  .find('p').each( function(){ // each p signifies a new group
    $(this)
      .prev('li') // walk back to the preceding li
      .prevUntil('p') // get the set of elements up to the previous p
      .andSelf() // include the current li
      .wrapAll('<ul>');​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ // wrap the set in a ul
   });

​ Here's a working jsFiddle using this approach.