Finding the birthdate in the DOM

Question

I am trying to obtain only the birth date (not the word Birthday but the date) from the DOM.

I've tried creating a regex to replace everything before Birthday</th><td> with a '' but I can't figure out how to remove the rest after the date as well as a split & join. Before resorting to cross referring an array of EVERY day in the calendar year, I thought I'd turn to StackOverflow.

I can get the HTML using:

document.getElementById('personal-info-view').innerHTML

which returns:

"<tbody><tr><th scope="row">Birthday</th><td>October 21</td></tr><tr><th scope="row">Marital Status</th><td>Single</td></tr></tbody>"

From here:

<table id="personal-info-view" class="additional-info-listing" summary="Personal Details">
   <tbody>
     <tr>
        <th scope="row">Birthday</th> 
        <td>October 21</td>
     </tr>
     <tr>
        <th scope="row">Marital Status</th>
        <td>Single</td>
     </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

CONTEXT UPDATE:

I am trying to get an alert when my connections on LinkedIn have upcoming birthday's while looking though their profiles.

Just so we're clear, you're trying to get the word "Birthday", from the html below the label "From here:"? — frosty, Oct 21 '15 at 20:19
I am trying to get the word/string `October 21` from the HTML below the label "From here:". Thanks for asking. — anonameuser22, Oct 21 '15 at 20:21
You are looking for a regex answer, or a javascript answer, or any answer? — AGE, Oct 21 '15 at 20:23
I am looking for any answer but would prefer a Javascript answer over a regex answer. — anonameuser22, Oct 21 '15 at 20:24
@BrianCurliss seems like you now have a lot of answers to work from, I suggest that you keep in mind the selector that will lead you to the birthdate and keep it in a `var` which you can modify if the website changes. — AGE, Oct 21 '15 at 20:38

AGE · Answer 1 · 2015-10-22T18:25:18.973

Using jQuery:

$(function(){
    var birthdate = $("tbody > :first-child > :last-child").text();
    alert(birthdate);
});

Using Javascript:

$(function(){
    var birthdate = document.querySelector("tbody > :first-child > :last-child").innerHTML;
    alert(birthdate);
});

Regex: (see @Washington Guedes, glad to give credit to other answerers).

Hope this helps!

Advice: Aiming towards the future you should consider the selector of your choice and storing it in a variable like so:

var birthdaySelector = "tbody > :first-child > :last-child";

If the site you are working on does change for whatever reason, or you find an optimal selector on your own, you can easily change it by modifying the value in the birthdaySelector variable. That way you can also implement it in whichever JS way you like.

If you perhaps are wondering how to use it, you can do it like so:

jQuery

var birthdate = $(birthdaySelector).text();

Javascript

var birthdate = document.querySelector(birthdaySelector).innerHTML;

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 21 '15 at 20:23

1

Try this regex:

[^>]+\d+(?=<)

Regex live here.

It would be:

document.getElementById('personal-info-view').innerHTML.match(/[^>]+\d+(?=<)/)[0];

Hope it helps.

answered Oct 21 '15 at 20:23

Spencer Wieczorek · Answer 3 · 2015-10-21T20:37:13.237

1

You could just get the DOM element directly with .querySelectorAll.

document.querySelectorAll("#personal-info-view tbody tr td")[0].innerHTML;

edited Oct 21 '15 at 20:37

answered Oct 21 '15 at 20:29

Spencer Wieczorek

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jQuery is not tagged. – isherwood Oct 21 '15 at 20:30
@isherwood Sorry was looking at other answers and was assuming. Give me one second it's an easy fix. – Spencer Wieczorek Oct 21 '15 at 20:31

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 21 '15 at 20:30

1

I think I'd try this:

document.getElementById('personal-info-view').children[0].children[0].children[1].innerHTML;

Demo

Would be better if you could get an ID on that table cell, though. This is pretty fragile (DOM-dependent).

answered Oct 21 '15 at 20:30

isherwood

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 21 '15 at 20:25

0

Try something like this:

~\w+ \d+~

answered Oct 21 '15 at 20:25

frosty

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Finding the birthdate in the DOM

5 Answers5