How to Check if a String has a Number in Javascript

In this tutorial, you will learn how to check if a string has a number in javascript. A number is nothing more than an arithmetic value that is used for representing the quantity and performing certain calculations. A number is formed by the combination of digits from 0 to 9. For a beginner, it can be a bit tricky to find if a string has a number.

There are numerous ways to check if a string has a number. But for the sake of simplicity, we will use the regular expression and ternary operator (?) to accomplish our goal. The test() method of RegExpObject is used to perform a pattern search in a string and returns a Boolean value.

In the following example, we have one global variable that holds a string. Upon click of a button, we will check check if it has a number and display the result on the screen.  Please have a look over the code example and the steps given below.

HTML & CSS

  • We have 3 elements in the HTML file (div, button, and h1). The div element is just a wrapper for the rest of the elements.
  • The innerText for the button element is “Check” and for the h1 element, it is “Result”.
  • We have done some basic styling using CSS and added the link to our style.css stylesheet inside the head element.
  • We have also included our javascript file script.js with a script tag at the bottom.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
  <title>Document</title>
</head>

<body>

  <div class="container">    
    <button>Check</button>
    <h1>Result</h1>
  </div>

  <script src="script.js"></script>
</body>

</html>
.container {        
    text-align: center;
}

button {
  margin-top: 10px;
  padding: 10px 20px;
}

Javascript

  • We have selected the button element and h1 element using the document.querySelector() method and stored them in btnCheck and output variables respectively.
  • We have attached a click event listener to the button element.
  • We have a global variable myString which holds a string as its value.
  • We have the regExp variable which holds a regular expression /\d/ as its value.
  • In the event handler function, we are calling the test() method of regExp and passing myString as a parameter. It will return a Boolean value which we are storing in the hasNumbers variable.
  • We are using the ternary operator (?) and checking whether hasNumbers is true or false. It will be true if the string has a number.
  • Depending upon the result of the check, we will assign “Yes” or “No” to the result variable.
  • We are displaying the result in the h1 element using the innerText property.
let btnCheck = document.querySelector("button");
let output = document.querySelector("h1");

let myString = "James Bond 007";
let regExp = /\d/;


btnCheck.addEventListener("click", () => {

  let hasNumbers = regExp.test(myString)
  let result = hasNumbers ? "Yes" : "No";
  output.innerText = result;
  
});