Count characters in textarea

jquery textarea counter onkeyup
Kyle picture Kyle · Mar 20, 2011 · Viewed 303.3k times · Source

I want to count characters in a textarea, so I just made:

<textarea id="field" onkeyup="countChar(this)"></textarea>

function countChar(val){
     var len = val.value.length;
     if (len >= 500) {
              val.value = val.value.substring(0, 500);
     } else {
              $('#charNum').text(500 - len);
     }
};

What's wrong with my piece of code? It does not work! Well, that was a newbie handwriting, need a help.

Answer

Caterham picture Caterham · Mar 20, 2011

What errors are you seeing in the browser? I can understand why your code doesn't work if what you posted was incomplete, but without knowing that I can't know for sure.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.5.js"></script>
    <script>
      function countChar(val) {
        var len = val.value.length;
        if (len >= 500) {
          val.value = val.value.substring(0, 500);
        } else {
          $('#charNum').text(500 - len);
        }
      };
    </script>
  </head>

  <body>
    <textarea id="field" onkeyup="countChar(this)"></textarea>
    <div id="charNum"></div>
  </body>

</html>

... works fine for me.

Edit: You should probably clear the charNum div, or write something, if they are over the limit.

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