Count words with JavaScript

Question

I am new to coding, so I would like to know how I can count words of an website with javascript. Should I use .innerText and a for loop?

First, how do you define a word or at least, how do you delimit them—will em-dashes cause trouble? What about Japanese letters? — Sebastian Simon
– Sebastian Simon, Commented Jul 3, 2015 at 12:12
Here is a previous question with the same subject: stackoverflow.com/questions/22498258/… — Joni Turunen
– Joni Turunen, Commented Jul 3, 2015 at 12:14

ben · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-03 12:28:59Z

3

Split on regular expression /\W+/ (\W matches anything that is not a latin letter or arabic number or an underscore) :

var text = "These are two sentences. They have ten words in total."; alert(text.split(/\W+/).length)

More details on regexp can by found on MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/RegExp

edited Jul 3, 2015 at 12:28

answered Jul 3, 2015 at 12:18

ben

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5 Comments

Sebastian Simon Over a year ago

\W+ would be better.

ben Over a year ago

@Xufox Any case where not having the + would give wrong result ?

Sebastian Simon Over a year ago

"These are two sentences. They have ten words in total.".split(/\W/).length would give 12 because the empty strings after . are counted as well.

Sebastian Simon Over a year ago

Other than that, this is the best solution so far as this even allows em-dashes etc. to delimit words. But what about normal dashes? For example, is camel-case two words or one?

Sebastian Simon Over a year ago

Also, the description is wrong (“\W match words”). It should be “\W matches anything that is not a latin letter or arabic number or an underscore”.

Vipul Bhatt · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-03 12:21:03Z

May be it can help you:

<script> var words = document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].innerHTML.replace(/<.*?>/g, ''); console.log(words.match(/\S+/g).length); </script>

Ahs N · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-03 12:17:54Z

This is how I would count the number of words as you type:

$(document).ready(function(){ $("#count").on("keyup", function(){ $("#num").html($("#count").html().split(" ").length-1); }); });

JSFiddle code here

AlphaG33k · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-03 12:20:54Z

This will do the trick for you if the language on the site uses spaces to separate words.

$.fn.showWordCount = function (){ "use strict"; var $targ = $(this); var words = $targ.html().split(' '); var wordCount = words.length; alert(wordCount); }; $('body *').showWordCount();

Proof it works: http://codepen.io/nicholasabrams/pen/rVJPOx

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