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

  • By
    Animated 3D Flipping Menu with CSS

    CSS animations aren't just for basic fades or sliding elements anymore -- CSS animations are capable of much more.  I've showed you how you can create an exploding logo (applied with JavaScript, but all animation is CSS), an animated Photo Stack, a sweet...

  • By
    Vibration API

    Many of the new APIs provided to us by browser vendors are more targeted toward the mobile user than the desktop user.  One of those simple APIs the Vibration API.  The Vibration API allows developers to direct the device, using JavaScript, to vibrate in...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Styling CSS Print Page Breaks

    It's important to construct your websites in a fashion that lends well to print. I use a page-break CSS class on my websites to tell the browser to insert a page break at strategic points on the page. During the development of my...

  • By
    Using MooTools to Instruct Google Analytics to Track Outbound Links

    Google Analytics provides a wealth of information about who's coming to your website. One of the most important statistics the service provides is the referrer statistic -- you've gotta know who's sending people to your website, right? What about where you send others though?

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!