Convert string to proper case with javascript

Question

Is there a simple way to convert a string to proper case? E.g. john smith becomes John Smith. I'm not looking for something complicated like John Resig's solution, just (hopefully) some kind of one- or two-liner.

Answer 1

See: How would you implement auto-capitalization in JavaScript/HTML.

Answer 2

var toMatch = "john w. smith";
var result = toMatch.replace(/(\w)(\w*)/g, function (_, i, r) {
      return i.toUpperCase() + (r != null ? r : "");
    }
)

Seems to work... Tested with the above, "the quick-brown, fox? /jumps/ ^over^ the ¡lazy! dog..." and "C:/program files/some vendor/their 2nd application/a file1.txt".

If you want 2Nd instead of 2nd, you can change to /([a-z])(\w*)/g.

The first form can be simplified as:

function toTitleCase(toTransform) {
  return toTransform.replace(/\b([a-z])/g, function (_, initial) {
      return initial.toUpperCase();
  });
}

Answer 3

Try this:

function toTitleCase(str)
{
    return str.replace(/\w\S*/g, function(txt){return txt.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + txt.substr(1).toLowerCase();});
}

Credit: http://efficienttips.com/convert-string-title-case-javascript/ (albeit google cache for some reason)

Answer 4

I made this function which can handle last names (so it's not title case) such as "McDonald" or "MacDonald" or "O'Toole" or "D'Orazio". It doesn't however handle German or Dutch names with "van" or "von" which are often in lower-case... I believe "de" is often lower-case too such as "Robert de Niro". These would still have to be addressed.

function toProperCase(s)
{
  return s.toLowerCase().replace( /\b((m)(a?c))?(\w)/g,
          function($1, $2, $3, $4, $5) { if($2){return $3.toUpperCase()+$4+$5.toUpperCase();} return $1.toUpperCase(); });
}

Answer 5

Try to apply the text-transform CSS style to your controls