13.Setting the text content of elements

Setting the text content of elements

Problem

You need to modify the text content of a HTML document.

Solution

Use the text setter methods of Element:

Element div = doc.select("div").first(); // <div></div> 
div.text("five > four"); // <div>five > four</div> 
div.prepend("First ");div.append(" Last"); 
// now: <div>First five > four Last</div>

Discussion

The text setter methods mirror the HTML setter methods:

• Element.text(String text) clears any existing inner HTML in an element, and replaces it with the supplied text.
• Element.prepend(String first) and Element.append(String last) add text nodes to the start or end of an element's inner HTML, respectively

The text should be supplied unencoded: characters like <, > etc will be treated as literals, not HTML.