why is if (element.innerHTML == "") not working in firefox
but works fine in IE , any ideas please ?
views:
198answers:
3
+4
A:
Hard to say without seeing your HTML, but I'd say probably because you have some empty white space in the element, and IE doesn't treat that as a text node, while FF does.
I believe it is actually a more strict standards compliance to treat any empty white space between tags as a text node, but IE doesn't comply.
You could do:
var htmlstring = element.innerHTML;
// use the native .trim() if it exists
// otherwise use a regular expression
htmlstring = (htmlstring.trim) ? htmlstring.trim() : htmlstring.replace(/^\s+/,'');
if(htmlstring == '') {...
Or just get rid of the whitespace in your HTML markup manually.
patrick dw
2010-09-09 13:28:22
@Patrick dw : thnx for ur reply and useful info. , do u have any idea about how to make this condition works in FireFox ??
mahmoud
2010-09-09 13:34:21
@mahmoud, make the > of the opening tag touch the < of the closing tag...
Benjol
2010-09-09 13:36:19
@mahmoud - For browsers that support `.trim()`, you could trim the whitespace before you test. Not all browsers support `.trim()` though. I'll update in a minute.
patrick dw
2010-09-09 13:37:54
var str=element.innerHTML();str = str.replace(/^\s*|\s*$/g,"");if (str == "") { alert('I'm so brilliant');}
Tomas Narros
2010-09-09 13:38:02
@Tomás - You could actually get rid of the last half of your regex. If the `innerHTML` only has white space, then it is redundant to test the beginning *and* the end of the string.
patrick dw
2010-09-09 13:43:52
@all : thnx for your great support :)
mahmoud
2010-09-09 13:50:47
@patrick- you're right. Thanks for your comment
Tomas Narros
2010-09-09 14:06:27
+3
A:
You could check if element.innerHTML.trim() == "" for the best results. However, then you have to extend the string prototype with a trim() method:
if (!String.prototype.trim) {
String.prototype.trim = function() { return this.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/, ''); };
}
if (element.innerHTML.trim() == "") {
//do something
}
naivists
2010-09-09 13:39:49
This would overwrite any native implementation in browsers that support `.trim()`. You should really test for it first.
patrick dw
2010-09-09 13:46:32
A:
An alternative method to check for the empty string is to check the length:
element.innerHTML.length == 0
But, you'd still have to trim() if you had a whitespace string you wanted to match.
palswim
2010-09-09 16:13:00