Are there any string formatting functions built into jQuery?

Question

I have the following code:

$("#stats-list")
    .append("<li>Elapsed: " + ajaxElapsed + "</li>\n" +
            "<li>Display: " + tableElapsed + "</li>\n" +
            "<li>Total:   " + (ajaxElapsed + tableElapsed) + "</li>");

This was originally three appends that I concatenated into one. Is there anything I could do with jQuery that would clean up this code even more. What I was wondering was if jQuery has any string formatting with tokens that I could use.

This http://stackoverflow.com/questions/610406/javascript-equivalent-to-printf-string-format and this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1038746/equivalent-of-string-format-in-jquery look like what you are asking for. — Ilia Frenkel, Sep 14 '12 at 06:12

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 14 '12 at 06:20

2

function format(formatString) {
    var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments,1);
    return formatString.replace(/\{(\d+)\}/g, function(match, num) {
      return args[Number(num)];
    });
}

format("<li>Elapsed: {0}</li>\n<li>Display: {1}</li>\n<li>Total:   {2}</li>",
    ajaxElapsed, tableElapsed, ajaxElapsed + tableElapsed);

answered Sep 14 '12 at 06:20

Markus Jarderot

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Any ideas why format is not there as part of javascript core functionality? – Samantha J T Star Sep 14 '12 at 06:35
Ecma did probably not consider it necessary. It's easy to implement yourself, as you see above. – Markus Jarderot Sep 14 '12 at 08:28

TheHe · Answer 2 · 2012-09-14T06:14:38.660

1

afaik there is none built-in, but a powerful templating-subsystem, see jQuery Templates

just for completeness, i think this could be done more elegant:

var list = $('#stats-list');
$('<li />').text('Elapsed: ' + ajaxElapsed).appendTo(list);
$('<li />').text('Display: ' + tableElapsed).appendTo(list);
$('<li />').text('Total: ' + (ajaxElapsed + tableElapsed)).appendTo(list);

edited Sep 14 '12 at 06:14

answered Sep 14 '12 at 06:05

TheHe

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Do you think I could use javascript formatting instead? I've almost no knowledge of javascript so I will have to look into that? – Samantha J T Star Sep 14 '12 at 06:10

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 14 '12 at 06:17

If you have many items you can do something like this to avoid missing + and writing li so many times. You can add any number of items inside the array and they will be joined with lis appropriately.

var list = '<li>' + [
  'Elapsed: ' + ajaxElapsed,
  'Display: ' + tableElapsed,
  'Total: ' + ajaxElapsed + tableElapsed
].join('</li><li>') + '</li>';

$("#stats-list").append(list);

As a note I wouldn't use \n. li is a block element by default, so you'd be better styling it with css.

Are there any string formatting functions built into jQuery?

3 Answers3