Test for special & html code

Question

I set a span using:

<span id=\"xxx\">&#9656;</span>

Can someone tell me why the following test doesn't work:

if ($("#xxx").text() == "▸")
         alert("hello");

Answer 1

because ▸ is actually this character ▸

When you do $('#xxx').text() you'll get ▸

Try doing it this way:

if ($("#xxx").text() == "▸")
     alert("hello");

From looking at the other questions linked in this one. Looks like the way to do what you're looking for is:

if ($("#xxx").text().charCodeAt() == '9656')
     alert("hello");

Answer 2

If you don't want to use the other answer that make a direct symbol condition $("#xxx").text() == "▸" and you want to check the span text ▸, you could use .charCodeAt(0) to get the special symbole number then add &# and ; in your condition :

var special_symbol_number = $("#xxx").text().charCodeAt(0);

if ( "&#"+special_symbol_number+";" === "▸")
  alert("hello");

Or you could check just with special symbol number as :

if ($("#xxx").text().charCodeAt(0) === '9656')
    alert("hello");

Hopet this helps.

if ($("#xxx").text().charCodeAt(0) === '9656')
  alert("hello");

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<span id="xxx">9656</span>

Answer 3

"&#9656‌;" is a that applies only to HTML and not to the Javascript. In HTML its' called an Entity, and it gets replaced with the literal character (▸). But it doesn't do this in JavaScript.

To check for the character in JavaScript, just put character in literally:

if ($("#xxx").text() == "▸")
    alert("hello");

You can get the character by copying it in your browser (select the ▸, and hit cmd-c or ctrl-c), and then pasting it in the JavaScript file.

The reason HTML uses entities is because it has some characters (like < and >) that can be parsed as actual parts of the code (try writing <text> in HTML; it won't be visible because HTML thinks you want an element); the entities allow these values to be parsed literally even when they look like code. Here is a working snippet, where the JavaScript successfully checks the contents of the element:

if ($("#xxx").text() == "▸")
    alert("hello");

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<span id="xxx">&#9656;</span>

Answer 4

Or you can do this:

<span id=\"xxx\">&amp;#9656;</span>

if ($("#xxx").text() == "&#9656;")
     alert("hello");