Get an array of list element contents in jQuery

Solution 1:

var optionTexts = [];
$("ul li").each(function() { optionTexts.push($(this).text()) });

...should do the trick. To get the final output you're looking for, join() plus some concatenation will do nicely:

var quotedCSV = '"' + optionTexts.join('", "') + '"';

Without redundant intermediate arrays:

var arr = $('li').map(function(i,el) {
    return $(el).text();
}).get();

See jsfiddle demo