How to Check if Specific Text Exists Inside li Using jQuery

Discover how to accurately check for specific text in a list item using jQuery, and avoid common mistakes.
---

Visit these links for original content and any more details, such as alternate solutions, latest updates/developments on topic, comments, revision history etc. For example, the original title of the Question was: check if specific text exists inside li using jquery

If anything seems off to you, please feel free to write me at vlogize [AT] gmail [DOT] com.
---
How to Check if Specific Text Exists Inside <li> Using jQuery

When working with HTML and JavaScript, particularly jQuery, you may find yourself needing to check if a specific text exists within a list item (<li>). This task can be straightforward, but it is also easy to make mistakes if you are not careful with your selectors. In this post, we will go through a common scenario where you want to check for the presence of a specific phrase in a list item, and we'll explore a solution to avoid common pitfalls that might lead to incorrect results.

The Problem

Imagine you have a block of HTML representing selected items, consisting of list items (<li>) with text descriptions. Let's consider the following piece of HTML where you're looking to confirm the presence of the text "All documentation, requests and payments".

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

You might write some jQuery code to check for this text using:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

However, this snippet returns true (found) when it shouldn't, leading to confusion.

Common Mistake

The issue here lies in the incorrect way you're specifying the selector for the <ul>. Specifically, you forgot to include a dot (.) between the classes in your jQuery selector, which means your selector is not targeting the intended element properly.

The Solution

To correctly determine whether the specified text exists, you need to fix the jQuery selector. Here’s how you can do it:

Updated jQuery Code

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Note that a receiving a length greater than 0 signifies that the element containing the desired text does indeed exist in your document.

Explanation

$('span:contains("All documentation, requests and payments")': This part checks for spans that directly contain the specified text.

Example Code Block

Here is how your full HTML with embedded jQuery would look like:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Conclusion

Checking for specific text inside list items using jQuery can be easy if you know how to use the selectors correctly. Always make sure to verify that your class names are properly concatenated with a dot (.) to ensure that jQuery finds the intended elements. Happy coding!