Removing non-break-spaces in JavaScript - javascript

I am having trouble removing spaces from a string. First I am converting the div to text(); to remove the tags (which works) and then I'm trying to remove the "&nbsp" part of the string, but it won't work. Any Idea what I'm doing wrong.
newStr = $('#myDiv').text();
newStr = newStr.replace(/ /g, '');
$('#myText').val(newStr);
<html>
<div id = "myDiv"><p>remove space</p></div>
<input type = "text" id = "myText" />
</html>

When you use the text function, you're not getting HTML, but text: the entities have been changed to spaces.
So simply replace spaces:
var str = " a     b   ", // bunch of NBSPs
newStr = str.replace(/\s/g,'');
console.log(newStr)
If you want to replace only the spaces coming from do the replacement before the conversion to text:
newStr = $($('#myDiv').html().replace(/ /g,'')).text();

.text()/textContent do not contain HTML entities (such as ), these are returned as literal characters. Here's a regular expression using the non-breaking space Unicode escape sequence:
var newStr = $('#myDiv').text().replace(/\u00A0/g, '');
$('#myText').val(newStr);
Demo
It is also possible to use a literal non-breaking space character instead of the escape sequence in the Regex, however I find the escape sequence more clear in this case. Nothing that a comment wouldn't solve, though.
It is also possible to use .html()/innerHTML to retrieve the HTML containing HTML entities, as in #Dystroy's answer.
Below is my original answer, where I've misinterpreted OP's use case. I'll leave it here in case anyone needs to remove from DOM elements' text content
[...] However, be aware that re-setting the .html()/innerHTML of an element means trashing out all of the listeners and data associated with it.
So here's a recursive solution that only alters the text content of text nodes, without reparsing HTML nor any side effects.
function removeNbsp($el) {
$el.contents().each(function() {
if (this.nodeType === 3) {
this.nodeValue = this.nodeValue.replace(/\u00A0/g, '');
} else {
removeNbsp( $(this) );
}
});
}
removeNbsp( $('#myDiv') );
Demo

Related

Uppercase for each new word swedish characters and html markup

I was pointed out to this post, which does not seem to follow the criteria I have:
Replace a Regex capture group with uppercase in Javascript
I am trying to make a regex that will:
format a string by adding uppercase for the first letter of each word and lower case for the rest of the characters
ignore HTML markup
Accept swedish characters (åäöÅÄÖ)
Say I've got this string:
<b>app</b>le store östersund
Then I want it to be (changes marked by uppercase characters)
<b>App</b>le Store Östersund
I've been playing around with it and the closest I've got is the following:
(?!([^<])*?>)[åäöÅÄÖ]|\s\b\w
Resulted in
<b>app</b>le Store Östersund
Or this
/(?!([^<])*?>)[åäöÅÄÖ]|\S\b\w/g
Resulted in
<B>App</B>Le store Östersund
Here's a fiddle:
http://refiddle.com/refiddles/598aabef75622d4a531b0000
Any help or advice is much appreciated.
It is not possible to do this with regexp alone, since regexp doesn't understand HTML structure. [*] Instead, we need to process each text node, and carry through our logic for what is the beginning of the word in case a word continues across different text nodes. A character is at start of the word if it is preceded by a whitespace, or if it is at the start of the string and it is either the first text node, or the previous text node ended in whitespace.
function htmlToTitlecase(html, letters) {
let div = document.createElement('div');
let re = new RegExp("(^|\\s)([" + letters + "])", "gi");
div.innerHTML = html;
let treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker(div, NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT);
let startOfWord = true;
while (treeWalker.nextNode()) {
let node = treeWalker.currentNode;
node.data = node.data.replace(re, function(match, space, letter) {
if (space || startOfWord) {
return space + letter.toUpperCase();
} else {
return match;
}
});
startOfWord = node.data.match(/\s$/);
}
return div.innerHTML;
}
console.log(htmlToTitlecase("<b>app</b>le store östersund", "a-zåäö"));
// <b>App</b>le Store Östersund
[*] Maybe possible, but even if so, it would be horribly ugly, since it would need to cover an awful amount of corner cases. Also might need a stronger RegExp engine than JavaScript's, like Ruby's or Perl's.
EDIT:
Even if just specifying really simple html tags? The only ones I am actually in need of covering is <b> and </b> at the moment.
This was not specified in the question. The solution is general enough to work for any markup (including simple tags). But...
function simpleHtmlToTitlecaseSwedish(html) {
return html.replace(/(^|\s)(<\/?b>|)([a-zåäö])/gi, function(match, space, tag, letter) {
return space + tag + letter.toUpperCase();
});
}
console.log(simpleHtmlToTitlecaseSwedish("<b>app</b>le store östersund", "a-zåäö"));
I have a solution which use almost only regex. It may be not the most intuitive way to do it, but it should be effective and I find it funny :)
You have to append at the end of your string every lowercase character followed by their uppercase counterpart, like this (it must also be preceded by a space for my regex) :
aAbBcCdDeEfFgGhHiIjJkKlLmMnNoOpPqQrRsStTuUvVwWxXyYzZåÅäÄöÖ
(I don't know which letters are missing, I know nothing about swedish alphabet, sorry... I'm counting on you to correct that !)
Then you can use the following regex :
(?![^<]*>)(\s<[^/]*?>|\s|^)([\wåäö])(?=.*\2(.)\S*$)|[\wåÅäÄöÖ]+$
Replace by :
$1$3
Test it here
Here is a working javascript code :
// Initialization
var regex = /(?![^<]*>)(\s<[^/]*?>|\s|^)([\wåäö])(?=.*\2(.)\S*$)|[\wåÅäÄöÖ]+$/g;
var string = "test <b when=\"2>1\">ap<i>p</i></b>le store östersund";
// Processing
result = string + " aAbBcCdDeEfFgGhHiIjJkKlLmMnNoOpPqQrRsStTuUvVwWxXyYzZåÅäÄöÖ";
result = result.replace(regex, "$1$3");
// Display result
console.log(result);
Edit : I forgot to handle first word of the string, it's corrected :)

escape characters not working with innerHTML

I have a string containing HTML escape characters (for <and >) that I am trying to render inside a div using innerHTML. the escaped characters are not supposed to be rendered like normal html, but rather as text. However, they still do, so is there a work around for this?
NOTE: the objective is to display a few (meaning not all) tags as normal text.
Here is an example implementation:
var string = "<div>yolo</div>";
string = string.replace(/</g, '<'); //replaces all '<' with its escape character
string = string.replace(/>/g, '>'); //replaces all '>' with its escape character
string = string.replace(/(=|%|\/|\*|-|,|;|\+|<|>)/g, "<span class=\"sc\">$1</span>");
//the last line adds special formatting
//to certain characters using CSS (not shown)
//and a span tag with class, "sc".
//this is the reason that I cannot just simply
//use innertext instead of innerhtml
document.body.innerHTML = string;
P.S. please give an answer in pure JavaScript. I do not care if you add a jQuery solution, I just need a pure javascript one.
It doesn't work properly because you're replacing the ;s with <spans>. Try replacing the whole < first to prevent your span-replacer from breaking the entities.
e.g.
var string = "<div>yolo</div>";
string = string.replace(/</g, '<'); //replaces all '<' with its escape character
string = string.replace(/>/g, '>'); //replaces all '>' with its escape character
string = string.replace(/(<|>|=|%|\/|\*|-|,|;|\+|<|>)/g, "<span class=\"sc\">$1</span>");
//the last line adds special formatting
//to certain characters using CSS (not shown)
//and a span tag with class, "sc".
//this is the reason that I cannot just simply
//use innertext instead of innerhtml
document.body.innerHTML = string;
.sc {
color: red;
font-weight: bold;
}
If you use jQuery, you may want to deal with text() instead of innerHTML().

ASCII character not being recognized in if statement

I am trying to get a string from a html page with jquery and this is what I have.
var text = $(this).text();
var key = text.substring(0,1);
if(key == ' ' || key == ' ')
key = text.substring(1,2);
text is this  Home
And I want to skip the space and or the keycode above It appears this code does not work either. It only gets the text.substring(0,1); instead of text.substring(1,2); because the if statement is not catching.= and I am not sure why. Any help would be super awesome! Thanks!
There are several problems with the code in the question. First,   has no special meaning in JavaScript: it is a string literal with six characters. Second, text.substring(1,2) returns simply the second character of text, not all characters from the second one onwards.
Assuming that you wish to remove one leading SPACE or NO-BREAK SPACE (which is what   means in HTML; it is not an Ascii character, by the way), then the following code would work:
var first = text.substring(0, 1);
if(first === ' ' || first === '\u00A0') {
text = text.substring(1, text.length);
}
The notation \u00A0 is a JavaScript escape notation for NO-BREAK SPACE U+00A0.
Should you wish to remove multiple spaces at the start, and perhaps at the end too, some modifications are needed. In that case, using a replace operation with regular expression is probably best.
If you want remove spaces at the beginning (and end) of a string, you can use the trim function
var myvar = " home"
myVar.trim() // --> "home"
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/Trim

Javascript Regular expression to remove unwanted <br>,

I have a JS stirng like this
<div id="grouplogo_nav"><br> <ul><br> <li><a class="group_hlfppt" target="_blank" href="http://www.hlfppt.org/">&nbsp;</a></li><br> </ul><br> </div>
I need to remove all <br> and $nbsp; that are only between > and <. I tried to write a regular expression, but didn't got it right. Does anybody have a solution.
EDIT :
Please note i want to remove only the tags b/w > and <
Avoid using regex on html!
Try creating a temporary div from the string, and using the DOM to remove any br tags from it. This is much more robust than parsing html with regex, which can be harmful to your health:
var tempDiv = document.createElement('div');
tempDiv.innerHTML = mystringwithBRin;
var nodes = tempDiv.childNodes;
for(var nodeId=nodes.length-1; nodeId >= 0; --nodeId) {
if(nodes[nodeId].tagName === 'br') {
tempDiv.removeChild(nodes[nodeId]);
}
}
var newStr = tempDiv.innerHTML;
Note that we iterate in reverse over the child nodes so that the node IDs remain valid after removing a given child node.
http://jsfiddle.net/fxfrt/
myString = myString.replace(/^( |<br>)+/, '');
... where /.../ denotes a regular expression, ^ denotes start of string, ($nbsp;|<br>) denotes " or <br>", and + denotes "one or more occurrence of the previous expression". And then simply replace that full match with an empty string.
s.replace(/(>)(?: |<br>)+(\s?<)/g,'$1$2');
Don't use this in production. See the answer from Phil H.
Edit: I try to explain it a bit and hope my english is good enough.
Basically we have two different kinds of parentheses here. The first pair and third pair () are normal parentheses. They are used to remember the characters that are matched by the enclosed pattern and group the characters together. For the second pair, we don't need to remember the characters for later use, so we disable the "remember" functionality by using the form (?:) and only group the characters to make the + work as expected. The + quantifier means "one or more occurrences", so or <br> must be there one or more times. The last part (\s?<) matches a whitespace character (\s), which can be missing or occur one time (?), followed by the characters <. $1 and $2 are kind of variables that are replaces by the remembered characters of the first and third parentheses.
MDN provides a nice table, which explains all the special characters.
You need to replace globally. Also don't forget that you can have the being closed . Try this:
myString = myString.replace(/( |<br>|<br \/>)/g, '');
This worked for me, please note for the multi lines
myString = myString.replace(/( |<br>|<br \/>)/gm, '');
myString = myString.replace(/^( |<br>)+/, '');
hope this helps

How to replace whitespaces using javascript?

I'm trying to remove the whitespaces from a textarea . The below code is not appending the text i'm selecting from two dropdowns. Can somebody tell me where i'd gone wrong? I'm trying to remove multiple spaces within the string as well, will that work with the same? Dont know regular expressions much. Please help.
function addToExpressionPreview() {
var reqColumnName = $('#ddlColumnNames')[0].value;
var reqOperator = $('#ddOperator')[0].value;
var expressionTextArea = document.getElementById("expressionPreview");
var txt = document.createTextNode(reqColumnName + reqOperator.toString());
if (expressionTextArea.value.match(/^\s+$/) != null)
{
expressionTextArea.value = (expressionTextArea.value.replace(/^\W+/, '')).replace(/\W+$/, '');
}
expressionTextArea.appendChild(txt);
}
> function addToExpressionPreview() {
> var reqColumnName = $('#ddlColumnNames')[0].value;
> var reqOperator = $('#ddOperator')[0].value;
You might as well use document.getElementById() for each of the above.
> var expressionTextArea = document.getElementById("expressionPreview");
> var txt = document.createTextNode(reqColumnName + reqOperator.toString());
reqOperator is already a string, and in any case, the use of the + operator will coerce it to String unless all expressions or identifiers involved are Numbers.
> if (expressionTextArea.value.match(/^\s+$/) != null) {
There is no need for match here. I seems like you are trying to see if the value is all whitespace, so you can use:
if (/^\s*$/.test(expressionTextArea.value)) {
// value is empty or all whitespace
Since you re-use expressionTextArea.value several times, it would be much more convenient to store it an a variable, preferably with a short name.
> expressionTextArea.value = (expressionTextArea.value.replace(/^\W+/,
> '')).replace(/\W+$/, '');
That will replace one or more non-word characters at the end of the string with nothing. If you want to replace multiple white space characters anywhere in the string with one, then (note wrapping for posting here):
expressionTextArea.value = expressionTextArea.value.
replace(/^\s+/,'').
replace(/\s+$/, '').
replace(/\s+/g,' ');
Note that \s does not match the same range of 'whitespace' characters in all browsers. However, for simple use for form element values it is probably sufficient.
Whitespace is matched by \s, so
expressionTextArea.value.replace(/\s/g, "");
should do the trick for you.
In your sample, ^\W+ will only match leading characters that are not a word character, and ^\s+$ will only match if the entire string is whitespace. To do a global replace(not just the first match) you need to use the g modifier.
Refer this link, you can get some idea. Try .replace(/ /g,"UrReplacement");
Edit: or .split(' ').join('UrReplacement') if you have an aversion to REs

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