How do I extract a substring from a string in Jquery

Question

I want to write a message in a textarea and be able to refer to a person using the @ symbol.

e.g

Please call @Larry David regarding something

When submitting the form, I want to extract the persons name ie Larry David.

How do I go about extracting this string with Jquery?

What if the person name is Larry David Regarding? I think the best you can do here is to extract Larry. — Darin Dimitrov
– Darin Dimitrov, Commented Oct 9, 2010 at 23:14
what do you think of using the same mechanism as SO uses for tags (i.e. smart autocompletion)? it's not an easy thing to do right though — glebm
– glebm, Commented Oct 9, 2010 at 23:17
why with jQuery?? using a regex would be more efficient like the example in the answer below.. — Andre Haverdings
– Andre Haverdings, Commented Oct 9, 2010 at 23:32
What are valid names? Does the name always matches a username on database or something? — BrunoLM
– BrunoLM, Commented Oct 9, 2010 at 23:50

Darin Dimitrov · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-09 23:22:33Z

5

What if the person name is Larry David Regarding? I think the best you can do here is to extract Larry:

var result = $('#textareaId').val().match(/\@(\w+)/);
if (result != null && result.length > 1) {
    alert(result[1]);
}

answered Oct 9, 2010 at 23:17

Darin Dimitrov

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Comments

epascarello · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-09 23:25:25Z

Well to match what you asked for it would be:

var str = "Please call @Larry David regarding something";
var re = /@(\w+\s\w+)/;

var name = str.match(re);
if(name){
    alert(name[1])
}

But it would fail for names like foo-bar, O'Donald, etc.

A regular expression such as

var re = /@(\w+\s[\w-']+)/;

would be a little better, but still will fail with other names.

Without a better way of figuring out where the name ends, you may have errors with names.