How do I find and replace HTML entities with jQuery?

Question

I've constructed a calendar template for a Drupal site using an HTML table, and I've got jQuery to add a class 'no-text' to each empty cell:

$('table.calendar td:empty').addClass('no-text');

This works well, but my problem is that the CMS WYSIWYG editor automatically adds the HTML entity   to empty cells. I've therefore attempted to find and replace the entities with a 'real' space beforehand, but jQuery fails to find them:

$('table.calendar td').each(function() {
   var $this = $(this);
   var t = $this.text();
   $this.text(t.replace('[entity here]',''));
});

This snippet works fine when replacing a normal string, but the   seems to be something different!

So my question is this: how can jQuery be used to search and replace HTML entities?

voting up, as it's a good question. nicely asked.

elcuco
– elcuco

2009-08-01 16:58:23 +00:00
Commented Aug 1, 2009 at 16:58 — elcuco
– elcuco, Commented Aug 1, 2009 at 16:58

jitter · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-01 17:26:41Z

9

The simplest thing to do would be

$this.text(t.replace('\u00a0',''));

Where \u00a0 is the unicode character for  

edited Aug 1, 2009 at 17:26

answered Aug 1, 2009 at 17:07

jitter

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1 Comment

james6848 Over a year ago

Thanks for all the answers, folks. This one worked just fine - cheers!

Zed · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-01 17:06:58Z

2

try

replace(/& nbsp;/g, '');

w/o the space after the ampersand.

answered Aug 1, 2009 at 17:06

Zed

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Comments

Kristinn Örn Sigurðsson · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-01 17:02:26Z

1

Have you tried .html() ?

$this.html('');

answered Aug 1, 2009 at 17:02

Kristinn Örn Sigurðsson

Comments

Evert · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-01 22:29:40Z

1

If your nbsp is within a tag, rather than an external js file, the html needs to be encoded twice:

&amp;nbsp;

answered Aug 1, 2009 at 22:29

Evert

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Comments

Anwar Chandra · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-04 22:12:53Z

1

This is another alternative that works.

var nbsp = unescape("%a0");     // a0 is hex code point for &nbsp;
$this.text(t.replace(nbsp,''));

edited Aug 4, 2009 at 22:12

answered Aug 1, 2009 at 18:50

Anwar Chandra

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