I want to make a content editable div in which I replace explicit words with asterisks. This is my JavaScript code:
function censorText(){
var explicit = document.getElementById("textbox").innerHTML;
var clean = explicit.replace(/"badtext1","cleantext1"|"badtext2","cleantext2"/);
document.getElementById("textbox").innerHTML = clean;
}
Here's the HTML for my contenteditable div
<div contenteditable="true" onkeyup="censorText()" id="textbox">Hello!</div>
As you can see, I tried using a regex operator to replace multiple strings at once, but it doesn't work. It doesn't replace badtext2
with cleantext2
, and it replaces badtext1
with 0
. How can I make a single .replace()
statement replace multiple strings?
use /.../g
to indicate a global replace.
var clean = explicit.replace(/badtext1/g,"cleantext2"/).replace(/cleantext1/g,"cleantext2"/).replace(/badtext2/g,"cleantext2"/);
A generic way to handle this is as follows:
Establish a dictionary and build a regexp:
var dictionary = { bad: 'good', worse: 'better', awful: 'wonderful'},
regexp = RegExp ('\\b(' + Object.keys (dictionary).join ('|') + ')\\b', 'g');
The regexp is constructed from the dictionary key words (note they must not contain RegExp special characters).
Now do a replace, using a function in the place of the replacing string, the function simply return the value of the corresponding key.
text = text.replace (regexp, function (_, word) { return dictionary[word]; });
The OP made no reference to upper/lower case. The following caters for initial and all caps and wraps the code as a function :
function clean (text) {
var dictionary = { bad: 'good', worse: 'better', awful: 'wonderful'},
regexp = RegExp ('\\b(' + Object.keys (dictionary).join ('|') + ')\\b', 'ig');
return text.replace (regexp, function (_, word) {
_ = dictionary[word.toLowerCase ()];
if (/^[A-Z][a-z]/.test (word)) // initial caps
_ = _.slice (0,1).toUpperCase () + _.slice (1);
else if (/^[A-Z][A-Z]/.test (word)) // all caps
_ = _.toUpperCase ();
return _;
});
}
See the fiddle : http://jsfiddle.net/nJNq2/
I think the answer from Jinzhao about covers it, but some other notes.
1) Don't use " in the RegEx
2) You can match multiple strings, but I think only replace to one value using a single RegEx. The only way I can think of to match multiple is as Jinzhao has done.
The following code snippet seems to work for me:
function censorText(){
var explicit = document.getElementById("textbox").innerHTML;
var clean = explicit.replace(/bad|worse/gi,"good");
document.getElementById("textbox").innerHTML = clean;
}
The other issue I'm finding is that when a replace happens, it returns the cursor to the start of the text box, which is going to get frustrating. If I find an answer to that, I'll post.