Replacing text using jquery

Question

I have the following:

var newValue = $('.TwitterSpot').text().replace('#', 'Blah Blah');
$('.TwitterSpot').text(newValue);

My assumption is that it will get all characters or pieces of text that have "#" replace it with Blah Blah.

It is not working? What am I missing?

The end result I want is to get #tag and replace it with a link to a link to twitter.com/#!/search/%23tag.

• pete: What type of element has the .TwitterSpot class?
• Explosion Pills: jsfiddle.net/2xHnt -- Works fine for me.
• thecoshman: Are you wanting to do this server side or client side?

Answer 1

I'd suggest to do it like

$('.TwitterSpot').text(function(_, text) {
 return text.replace(/#/g, 'Blah Blah');
});

.text() like many other getter/setter jQuery functions offers a callback which gets passed in the current value. By returning a new value you can update that string.

Your mistake was not using a regular expression for the .replace() function. By doing that you can set the global flag g, which makes sure every occurence is matched.

• user400654: This needs to also grab the text value of the tag so that it can be added to the url.
• Anicho: Is there a way of not losing formatting for other elements within .TwitterSpot div?
• jAndy: @Anicho: there are more elements contained by that div? Uhh that would get a little more tricky then. We would need to get the .contents() from the element and find the TextNode to modify.
• Anicho: No issue you got me going in the right direction /#/g worked like a charm. I'll target the element directly within .TwitterSpot instead.

Answer 2

.replace takes a regular expression. To replace all you have to use the global ("g") flag.

.replace(/#/g, 'Blah Blah')

• pete: .replace also takes strings. See the MDN: developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/…
• user400654: This needs to also grab the text value of the tag so that it can be added to the url
• Anicho: Is there a way of not losing formatting for other elements within .TwitterSpot div?
• T. Stone: @pete the type may be string, but it's understood as a regular expression