$.text() return empty string

From my understanding of the docs, once you cheerio.load( someMarkup ) then calling .html or .text on the returned variable should return the entire input markup and the input markup less HTML tags, respectively. However, $.html() (as used in the readme) works, but $.text() only returns an empty string.

Put another way, I would expect these two snippets to be equivalent, but where I would expect “Some Text String” for the result of $1.text(), an empty string is returned instead: .text() only works if a selector is provided first.

var cheerio = require('cheerio');

// comments represent actual output

console.log('Unwrapped:')
var $1 = cheerio.load('Some <em>Text</em> String');
console.log($1.html()); // "Some <em>Text</em> String"
console.log($1.text()); // ""

console.log('Wrapped:');
var $2 = cheerio.load('<h1>Some <em>Text</em> String</h1>');
console.log($2('h1').html()); // "Some <em>Text</em> String"
console.log($2('h1').text()); // "Some Text String"

[jugglinmike]

Hey Kadam, thanks for the report!

The trouble here is in the distinction between the static $.text method and the $.prototype.text instance method. $.prototype.text has the behavior you want, but it requires you make an instance first–a bit tricky when your document does not have a top-level element. $.text would seem like the right alternative (given the documented behavior of $.html as you point out), but it doesn’t actually do this… for some reason.

I’ve submitted gh-855 to enable your use case for $.text and to promote API parity. As I mention there, the new feature is technically backwards breaking, although only of undocumented/untested functionality. I’m going to defer to my fellow maintainers to decide on if/how/when we’d like to merge that patch.

In the mean time, I have two alternatives that will work for you today, both of which use documented, tested APIs:

1. Passing the root node to the static method: $.text($.root())
2. Calling the instance method on a selection for the root node: $.root().text()

Do either of those work for you?

[fb55]

Fixed in #855 (not released yet)