How to get a bit of text using jQuery

I have the following scenario where I need to get text from a specific id area, for instance, in this case I'd like to get the name of th开发者_JAVA百科e person. I already know the id i.e. booking_11 as I've got this from the onClick:

<li id="booking_11">Name of person <span style="float: right;"><a href="#" id="11" class="dialog">View</a> | <a class="remove" id="rmCandidate_11" href="#">Remove</a></span></li>

To get only that "Name of person" text node you can do this (without changing your markup):

var name = $("#booking_11").contents().filter(function() { 
                                           return this.nodeType == 3; 
                                       }).text();

You can test it out here (broken up above to fit SO cleanly, it can be a one-liner).

Make a div/span like this:

<span class="test">Name of person</span> View | Remove

And then:

jQuery('#booking_11 > .test').text();

$('booking_11').text();