Q:

How to grab the value of the span element using jQuery

I have the following code:
<tr>
<td Width="50%" align="left">
<span id="ctl00_lblTotalDesc">Ext. Subtotal</span></td>
<td Width="50%" align="right">
<span id="ctl00_lblTotalValue">100,087,000.00</span></td>
</tr>

I used the following to grab the value of the 2nd span element:
spanValue = $('#ctl00_lblTotalValue').text();

But this doesn't seem to work in Spock/Geb. I get the following error:
TypeError: $(...).text is not a function

What am I doing wrong
I get the following error if I use, $('#ctl00_lblTotalValue')
[object HTMLTableElement]

Firefox console was not useful so used Chrome console.
In Chrome: if I try $('#ctl00_lblTotalValue'), I get 
<span id="ctl00_lblTotalValue">100,087,000.00</span>

But .text() - gives Type error: Object # has no method 'text'

A:

Is "ctl00_lblTotalValue" the id you assigned to the span or is it a server-side control getting its ID auto-assigned by the environment?
For example, if I have this code in my .NET aspx page
<div id="pnlHeader" runat="server"></div>

it gets rendered in the html page as 
<div id="ctl00_pnlHeader"></div>

If that is the case, I need to grab it in the jquery using this syntax
$("#<%= pnlHeader.ClientID%>").text()

If yours is a server-side control, you may need to grab the text using
spanValue = $("#<%= lblTotalValue.ClientID%>").text();

