jQuery script to replace a span, insert a block of code, which contains the original text

Answer 1

For performance and organizational reasons, I like to keep the markup in the HTML (instead of building big HTML strings in javascript), so I usually create hidden template nodes for this sort of thing. The jQuery function you want is replaceWith().

HTML:

<span class="error">ORIGINAL TEXT</span>
<span class="error">ORIGINAL TEXT2</span>

<div class="ui-widget" id="error-template" style="display:none;">
  <div class="ui-state-error ui-corner-all" style="padding: 0 .7em;">
    <p><span class="ui-icon ui-icon-alert" style="float: left; margin-right: .3em;"> </span>                
   <strong>ORIGINAL TEXT</strong></p>
  </div>
</div>

SCRIPT:

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('span.error').each(function(i,v) {
        var text = $(this).text();
        var newBlock = $('#error-template').clone().removeAttr('id').show();
        newBlock.find('strong:first').text(text);
        $(this).replaceWith(newBlock);
    });
});

See it in action at jsfiddle.

Answer 2

First issue is that divs are display: block by default. You'll need to style ui-widget so that the div is inline.

<style>
    .ui-widget { display: inline; }
</style>

Then, you'll need to replace the span with a new dom structure:

<script type="text/javascript">
    var originalText = $("span.error").text();

    $("span.error").replaceWith(
        $("<div>").attr("class", "ui-widget")
            .append($("<div>").attr("class", "ui-state-error ui-corner-all").attr("style", "padding: 0 .7em;")
                .append($("p")
                    .append($("<span>").attr("class", "ui-icon ui-icon-alert").attr("style", "float: left; margin-right: .3em;"))
                .append($("<strong>").text(originalText))
            )
        );

</script>