How can I get the first word only out of a string with javascript?

Question

I have the following:

var html = document.documentElement;
var class = html.className;

This returns "black ng-scope";

How can I make it so that class just returns the first word?

Already asked : http://stackoverflow.com/q/3203966/1636522 – Oct 21 '13 at 19:58 — , Oct 21 '13 at 19:58

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 21 '13 at 19:48

9

You can use

var firstClass = html.className.split(' ')[0]

answered Oct 21 '13 at 19:48

Denys Séguret

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score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 21 '13 at 19:56

3

An alternative way of getting the separated class names is by using classList. see browser support and documentation

answered Oct 21 '13 at 19:56

Jakob W

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Great answer did not know about `classList` thank you. I will add this to my answer as well. – Hugo Tunius Oct 21 '13 at 19:57

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 21 '13 at 19:48

2

> "hey there".split(" ")[0]
"hey"

answered Oct 21 '13 at 19:48

Claudiu

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score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 21 '13 at 19:55

1

var classes = class.split(" "); // Returns an array
var firstclass = classes[0];

edited Oct 21 '13 at 19:55

answered Oct 21 '13 at 19:49

scrblnrd3

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 21 '13 at 19:55

Another idea is using regular expressions if you could have other word boundaries than space.

var reg = /(.+?)(?:\s|$)/,
    match = html.className.match(reg);

if (match) {
    match[1]; // Your match
}

This has the added benefit of matching more than a single space.

EDIT: If you are using this to strictly get all classes of an HTML element and you are targeting sufficiently new browsers use classList like Jakob W suggested.

How can I get the first word only out of a string with javascript?

5 Answers5