dom manipulation - jQuery : remove element except inside element

Question

Is there any way to remove element except inside element:

<div class="gallery">
  <a href="images/rep.png" title="rep">
    <img src="http://example.com/uploads/rep.png" class="thumbnail" alt="rep" title="rep">
  </a>
</div>

to

<div class="gallery">
  <img src="http://example.com/uploads/rep.png" class="thumbnail" alt="rep" title="rep">
</div>

I wrote this code but not work:

$(".gallery").contents().filter(".thumbnail").remove();

Answer 1

jQuery has an unwrap() method which removes the parent node and leaves the matched element in place:

$(".gallery").contents().filter(".thumbnail").unwrap();

// or (faster)
$(".gallery .thumbnail").unwrap();

• http://api.jquery.com/unwrap/