Extract a Number from a String with JavaScript

By  on  

User input from HTML form fields is generally provided to JavaScript as a string. We've lived with that fact for decades but sometimes developers need to extract numbers from that string. There are multiple ways to get those numbers but let's rely on regular expressions to extract those numbers!

To employ a regular expression to get a number within a string, we can use \d+:

const string = "x12345david";
const [match] = string.match(/(\d+)/);
match; // 12345

Regular expressions are capable of really powerful operations within JavaScript; this practice is one of the easier operations. Converting the number using a Number() wrapper will give you the number as a Number type.

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Dynamically Load Stylesheets Using MooTools 1.2

    Theming has become a big part of the Web 2.0 revolution. Luckily, so too has a higher regard for semantics and CSS standards. If you build your pages using good XHTML code, changing a CSS file can make your website look completely different.

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

Discussion

  1. Dekel

    the code string.match(/(\d+)/); assumes that a match is found. If no number is present in the string, string.match(/(\d+)/) will return null, and attempting to destructure null will result in an error

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!