How to remove <br> from text nodes and wrapping with <p> tag when its contains <b>, <i>, <a>, etc

Question

My condition (EDIT):

<div class="entry-content">
    <h1>This header won't be included</h1>
    Write by: Me
    <br></br>
    On: 01/01/2017
    <br></br>
    <br></br>
    When you quote: "<i>And whoever strives only strives for [the benefit of] himself.</i>"
    <br></br>
    <br></br>
    <i>There</i> is another: "And that <b>there is not for man</b> except that [good] for which he strives, and that his effort is going to be seen, then <a href="#">he will be</a> recompensed for it with the fullest recompense."
    <br></br>
    <br></br>
    <h2>And neither will this one</h2>
    I fight for myself.
</div>

My goal (EDIT):

<div class="entry-content">
    <h1>This header won't be included</h1>
    <p>Write by: Me
    <br></br>
    On: 01/01/2017</p>
    <p>When you quote: "<i>And whoever strives only strives for [the benefit of] himself.</i>"</p>
    </p><i>There</i> is another: "And that <b>there is not for man</b> except that [good] for which he strives, and that his effort is going to be seen, then <a hre="#">he will be</a> recompensed for it with the fullest recompense."</p>
    <h2>And neither will this one</h2>
    <p>I fight for myself.</p>
</div>

I have tried:

$( ".entry-content" )
  .contents()
  .filter(function() {
     return this.nodeType === 3;
   })
  .wrap( "<p></p>" )
  .end()
  .filter( "br" )
  .remove();

I have also reads many like this before: How can I wrap text nodes . But they can't handle <i> , <b> , <a> , etc.

They just look like this:

<div class="entry-content">
    <p><h1>This header won't be included</h1></p>
    <p>Write by: Me</p>
    <p>On: 01/01/2017</p>
    <p>When you quote: "</p>
    <i>And whoever strives only strives for [the benefit of] himself.</i>
    <p>"</p>
    <i>There</i>
    <p>is another: "And that <b>there is not for man</b> except that [good] for which he strives, and that his effort is going to be seen, then</p>
    <a hre="#">he will be</a>
    <p>recompensed for it with the fullest recompense."</p>
    <p><h2>And neither will this one</h2></p>
    <p>I fight for myself.</p>
</div>

Answer 1

I hope this is what you need:

 var rows = $(".entry-content").html().split("<br>"); rows = $.map(rows, function(value) { return value === "" ? null : value; }); $(".entry-content").html('<p>' + rows.join("</p>\\n<p>") + '</p>'); console.log($(".entry-content").html()); 

 <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <div class="entry-content"> When you quote: "<i>And whoever strives only strives for [the benefit of] himself.</i>" <br><br> <i>There</i> is another: "And that <b>there is not for man</b> except that [good] for which he strives, and that his effort is going to be seen, then <a hre="#">he will be</a> recompensed for it with the fullest recompense." <br><br> I fight for myself. </div> 

Answer 2

Here is a "one-liner" that doesn't involve touching the inner HTML text. It works by wrapping every node with its own paragraph and then unwrapping every br , so that the adjacent sibling and first-child selectors can be used to find the point where the wrapping paragraphs should start.

Edit: I had to make this even longer in order to specially exclude headers, blockquotes, and anchors containing images with source attributes. A more performant implementation would be to loop over the child nodes without jQuery; if you need this to run often then let me know and I can provide an alternate implementation. It was difficult to work around the way jQuery handles text nodes, which is by pretty much discarding them for every operation except .contents() .

 console.log( // Begin magic $('.entry-content') .contents() .wrap('<p>') .filter('br, :header, blockquote, a:has(img[src])') .unwrap() .end() .end() .children(':first-child, :not(p) + p') .each(function (i, e) { $(e).nextUntil(':not(p)').addBack().wrapAll('<p>').contents().unwrap() }) .end() .children(':first-child, :not(p) + p') .each(function (i, e) { e.firstElementChild || e.textContent.trim() || $(e).remove() }) .end() .children('br') .remove() // End magic .end().html()) 

 <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script> <div class="entry-content"> <h1>This header won't be included</h1> When you quote: "<i>And whoever strives only strives for [the benefit of] himself.</i>" <br><br> <i>There</i> is another: "And that <b>there is not for man</b> except that [good] for which he strives, and that his effort is going to be seen, then <a href="#">he will be</a> recompensed for it with the fullest recompense." <br><br> <h2>And neither will this one</h2> I fight for myself. <blockquote>Keep me</blockquote> I am special. <a><img src="http://ignore-me.com"></a> There <b>is</b> nothing more special than everything <a><img src="http://ignore-me-too.com"></a> </div>