|
Have you ever thought that it would be useful to be
able to count the number of words that have been typed
into a text field or text area. Well here's a
script that dynamically keeps track of how many words
have been entered. Please type some text into the
following text box to see how it works.
To implement this, all you need to do is to include the
following script into the <head> section of your
page:
function cnt(w,x){
var y=w.value;
var r = 0;
a=y.replace(/\s/g,' ');
a=a.split(' ');
for (z=0; z<a.length; z++) {if (a[z].length > 0)
r++;}
x.value=r;
}
The script changes any new line characters into single
spaces and then splits the string into separate pieces
wherever there is a space. All of the pieces that
actually contain something are "words" and
get counted. Note that because this function uses
regular expressions so it will only work correctly with
version 4 browsers and later.
Next we need to call this routine whenever your visitor
tries to enter anything into either field (we include
the count field so that anything they enter there will
be changed back into the correct count of words in the
field we are counting). We do this by using the
onkeyup method so that the count is recalculated
every time anything is typed.
<form name="myform">
<textarea rows="15" name="w"
cols="45"
onkeyup="cnt(this,document.myform.c)"></textarea>
<br />Word Count: <input type="text"
name="c" value="0"
size="5"
onkeyup="cnt(document.myform.w,this)"
/>
</form>
In each case both fields are passed to the function in
the same order (field to count words in, field to
display count). You can call the fields whatever you
like as long as you reference them correctly by name in
the function call.
Note that this script and the description of how it
works are copied from the "Ask Felgall" website with
the permission of the copyright owner.
|
| 