How to get the innerHTML of selectable jquery element?

Question

I have a php generated list whose list items are selectable using jquery selectable widget. The list for all intents and purposes is:

Answer 1

The parameter ui has a property called selected which is a reference to the selected dom element, you can call innerHTML on that element.

Your code $('.ui-selected').innerHTML tries to return the innerHTML property of a jQuery wrapper element for a dom element with class ui-selected

$(function () {
    $("#select-image").selectable({
        selected: function (event, ui) {
            var $variable = ui.selected.innerHTML; // or $(ui.selected).html()
            console.log($variable);
        }
    });
});

Demo: Fiddle