Convert HTML text into plain text

Question

Is there a method or function that does this, or do I have to check each character of a string. To give an idea on what I'm talking about, for example. I have an HTML TEXT like:

<p><strong>Welcome&nbsp;</strong>to this&nbsp;<em>message,&nbsp;</em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">you may come in peace.</span></p>

I need to convert it into a plain text, resulting into:

Welcome to this message, you may come in peace.

The text will come from a textarea which is a child of a div with an id = editor-email.

I also wanted to take the current text, but it won't work.

var textEmail = $('#editor-email').find('textarea').text();

``` html = "
Welcome to this message, you may come in peace.
" html = html.replace(/ — Dmytro Myronenko, Apr 22 '21 at 08:12

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 08 '18 at 14:13

You can do it like with pure JS

let a = `<p><strong>Welcome&nbsp;</strong>to this&nbsp;<em>message,&nbsp;</em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">you may come in peace.</span></p>
`;

let d = document.createElement('div');
d.innerHTML = a;
console.log(d.innerText);

Kees · Answer 2 · 2018-02-08T14:29:36.057

0

I think you need:

$("p").text()

EDIT:

If you want the value from the textarea then you will need:

$("#editor-email > textarea").val();

edited Feb 08 '18 at 14:29

answered Feb 08 '18 at 14:11

Kees

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this wont work if you have more than one
element
– JPRLCol Feb 08 '18 at 14:12
What if it's a textarea, I'll update my question to make it more clear. – Jan Ariel San Jose Feb 08 '18 at 14:25
@JanArielSanJose If its a textarea then do $("textarea").val() – Kees Feb 08 '18 at 14:26
@KeesdeWit look at the updated question, it's a child of a div. I can't make it seem to work. – Jan Ariel San Jose Feb 08 '18 at 14:27
@JanArielSanJose Check my update – Kees Feb 08 '18 at 14:29
@KeesdeWit I can't still get it. I'm trying to use `alert` to debug. This is what happened to the line. `var textEmail = $("#editor-email > textarea").text();` – Jan Ariel San Jose Feb 08 '18 at 14:35
@KeesdeWit Oh wait, I forgot to change text to val. Now I changed it and it returns "undefined". – Jan Ariel San Jose Feb 08 '18 at 14:37

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 08 '18 at 14:13

0

If you're looking for a JQuery-free solution, you can select the element and use .innerText:

document.querySelector('#myElement').innerText

answered Feb 08 '18 at 14:13

Antony

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This will not work for old browsers: https://caniuse.com/#feat=queryselector – Kees Feb 08 '18 at 14:33
querySelector will not, but selecting the element isn't the pertinent part – Antony Feb 08 '18 at 14:53

Convert HTML text into plain text

3 Answers3