How to extract text from Link in Javascript?

Question

I have following string:

<a href="http://stackoverflow.com" target="_blank">StackOverFlow</a>

How can I extract text (i.e. StackOverFlow) from the string?

Senad Meškin · Answer 1 · 2011-06-14T14:54:45.880

2

document.getElementById('link_id').innerHTML;

That was my solution before, user added more description but this is solution for current description

var s = '<a href="http://stackoverflow.com" target="_blank">StackOverFlow</a>';
var text = s.match(/<a[^\b>]+>(.+)[\<]\/a>/)[1];

edited Jun 14 '11 at 14:54

answered Jun 14 '11 at 14:30

Senad Meškin

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Can I use innerHTML on a string/var? – Salman Virk Jun 14 '11 at 14:33
@user395881: No. Only DOM elements have that property. – Felix Kling Jun 14 '11 at 14:34
your description was not as before, that's the reason I have received 2 down votes. – Senad Meškin Jun 14 '11 at 14:46
The question always was *How can I extract text (i.e. StackOverFlow) **from the string?*** I agree, the title can be misleading, but it's not the OP's fault that you got downvotes. – Felix Kling Jun 14 '11 at 14:53

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:00

2

No regex required:

var t_ = document.createElement('div'),
    a;
t_.innerHTML = htmlString; // <- string containing your HTML
a = t_.children[0];

var text = a.textContent || a.innerText; // W3C vs IE

Actually parsing HTML with regular expressions is evil. Although it might be easy to come up with an expression for your specific case, it might not work well for a different string.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:00

Community

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answered Jun 14 '11 at 14:32

Felix Kling

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 14 '11 at 14:32

0

If you can add an id to your link like so: `StackOverFlow" then you can get the text like this:

document.getElementById('linkID').innerHTML;

answered Jun 14 '11 at 14:32

James Allardice

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Ohh can't believe it took me this long to realise that! I thought the question referred to an actual link in the DOM. – James Allardice Jun 14 '11 at 14:38
I'm pretty sure you're right, having read and re-read the question about 10 times now! That plus the fact that the OP posted that comment about using `innerHTML` on a "string/var" on @Senad's answer. – James Allardice Jun 14 '11 at 14:42

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 14 '11 at 14:56

window.onload = function(){
    var text = '<a href="http://stackoverflow.com" target="_blank">StackOverFlow</a>';
    var parser = null;
    if (window.DOMParser){
        parser = new DOMParser();
        xmlDoc = parser.parseFromString(text,"text/xml");
    } else{ // Internet Explorer
        xmlDoc=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");
        xmlDoc.async="false";
        xmlDoc.loadXML(text); 
    }
    var a = xmlDoc.childNodes[0];
    alert(a.childNodes[0].nodeValue);
}

http://www.w3schools.com/dom/dom_parser.asp

How to extract text from Link in Javascript?

4 Answers4

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