Javascript: Capitalization of each Word in String

Question

Greetings, I want to capitalize each word in a script, for this I have came up with a such method:

//Word Capitalization
function wordToUpper(val) {
        newVal = '';
        val = val.toLowerCase().split(' ');
        for(var c=0; c < val.length; c++) {
                newVal += val[c].substring(0,1).toUpperCase() + val[c].substring(1,val[c].length) + ' ';
        }
        return newVal;
}

Now it works for regular words starting after and emtpy char " ".

However I also want to make sure it fails for such strings:

wordToUpper('hello my name is Hellnar.it doesnt work.') -> Hello My Name Is Hellnar.it Doesnt Work. "it" had to be capital.

wordToUpper('hello my name is (hellnar).') -> Hello My Name Is (hellnar). "Hellnar" had to capital.

Regards

Note: Please not the css classic text-transform: capitalize; solution as this data will be used for form posting.

Answer 1

The following will handle all Unicode letters, unlike any solution using \w, \b or [a-z] etc. Admittedly the regular expression is rather large. Character lists taken from Steve Levithan's excellent XRegExp library.

var letters = 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var regex = new RegExp("(^|[^" + letters + "])([" + letters + "])", "g");

function capitalizeWords(str) {
    return str.replace(regex, function(s, m1, m2) {
        return m1 + m2.toUpperCase();
    });
}

alert( capitalizeWords("öar") ); // Öar

Answer 2

split can take a regex. So instead of using ' ' split on a word boundary like so:

val = val.toLowerCase().split(/\b/);

Answer 3

function wordToUpper(str) {
    return (str + '').replace( /(^|[^a-z])([a-z])/g, function (m,p1,p2) {
        return p1+p2.toUpperCase();        
    });
}

mix of the codes - fixes the issue

Answer 4

mystring = "this is a test of the emergency broadcast system";

mystring = mystring.replace( /(^|\s)([a-z])/g , function(m,p1,p2){ return p1+p2.toUpperCase(); } );

or as a function

String.prototype.capitalize = function(){
    return this.replace( /(^|\s)([a-z])/g , function(m,p1,p2){ return p1+p2.toUpperCase(); } );
};

mystring.capitalize();

credit: http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/javascript/text/case-capitalize.html

Answer 5

The answer given by castis is best, but as you wanted non-whitespace characters that were punctuation to count as well, you will need this:

String.prototype.capitalize = function(){
    return this.replace(/(^[a-z]|[ .,\(\)\[\]]+[a-z])/g, function(s) {
        return s.toUpperCase();
    });
};

'hello my name is Hellnar.(it) doesnt work.'.capitalize();