Test if an element can contain text

Question

Is there a clean and robust way in which I can test (using pure javascript or also jQuery) if an HTML element can contain some text?

For instance,


Answer 1

I believe you're looking for a list of void HTML tags:

The following is a complete list of the void elements in HTML:

area, base, br, col, command, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr

From there you would just test the node to see if it is in the list. For example:

var voidNodeTags = ['AREA', 'BASE', ...];
var isNodeVoid = function (node) {
    return voidNodeTags.indexOf(node.nodeName) !== -1;
};

http://jsfiddle.net/3uQjH/