How to retrieve a word from the string

Question

str = <a href = "#homecoupon" class ="current">COUPONS</a>

how to get the word COUPONS from the str. the word #homecoupon might change to other word so i can't do the substring method of retrieving the nth position value. the class ="current">COUPONS</a> will always be fixed.

Is there a way i can back track and retrieve the last nth word.

Answer 1

The best way to parse HTML in the browser is to let the browser do it for you.

Create a dummy element in memory, then set its innerHTML to your string. You can then use the regular DOM API to find the text of that anchor element:

var div = document.createElement('div');
div.innerHTML = str;
var word = div.firstChild.textContent;

Here's the fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/mREFu/

---

If you still have to support IE < 9, you'll have to use this:

var word = div.firstChild.textContent || div.firstChild.innerText;

Or you could get the text from the text node:

var word = div.firstChild.childNodes[0].nodeValue;

Answer 2

If it's an actual string not a part of a web page :

var str = '<a href = "#homecoupon" class ="current">COUPONS</a>';

var word = str.match(/"current">(.*?)</);
if(word) word = word[1]; //== COUPONS

Or if you're using jQuery and that's an actual web page you can go :

$('a.current').each(function(){
    alert($(this).text());
});

Answer 3

Using substring() and indexof() you can do this.

str = '<a href = "#homecoupon" class ="current">COUPONS</a>';

// get rid of </a> assuming the string always ends with it
var x = str.substring(0,str.length-4);

// use the fixed part to get the value you want
alert(x.substring(x.indexOf('class ="current">')+17))

OR

str = '<a href = "#homecoupon" class ="current">COUPONS</a>';
fixedPart = 'class ="current">';

// use the fixed part to get the value you want assuming str always ends with </a>
alert(str.substring(str.indexOf(fixedPart)+fixedPart.length, str.length-4))