Javascript / JQuery .replace() not working

Question

I'm using a jquery url shortener (https://github.com/hayageek/jQuery-URL-shortener), and I'm trying to make it so when the jquery returns the shortened url it will replace the original url in the textarea. My problem is that the .replace() doesn't seem to be working here:

$("#button").click(function () {
 regex = /(https?:\/\/(?:www\.|(?!www))[^\s\.]+\.[^\s]{2,}|www\.[^\s]+\.[^\s]{2,})/g ;
 var longUrlLink = $("#textarea").val().match(regex);
 jQuery.urlShortener({
 longUrl: longUrlLink,
 success: function (shortUrl) {
 $("#textarea").val().replace(longUrlLink, shortUrl);
 }
 });
});

The regex works fine, and shortUrl is is being returned fine, so the problem must lie with how I've written then last line, but I cannot seem to get it to work.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

• ntgCleaner: maybe I haven't read into it much, but if you just place shortUrl in your $('#textarea').val() it should automatically overwrite it -- $("#textarea").val(shortUrl);
• War10ck: @ntgCleaner is correct. If all you're trying to do is overwrite the value then you just need $('#textarea').val(shortUrl);...
• sharif9876: The textarea val will usually have more characters in it than just the url, and I don't want to replace all of that, so this wouldn't work
• Mutant: you need to set the value after shortening it.

Answer 1

You have to also set the new value:

$("#textarea").val($("#textarea").val().replace(longUrlLink, shortUrl));