How to Check if Textbox Contains a Character in Javascript

In this tutorial, you will learn how to check if textbox contains a character in javascript. A string is formed by the combination of multiple characters and a character in a string can be a letter, number, or a special character.

In HTML, a textbox is created using either input element or textarea element. Input element is suitable for a single line text content and textarea element is suitable for multiline text content. From a developer perspective, it can be a bit tricky to find if a textbox contains a character.

There are numerous ways to check if a textbox contains a character. But for the sake of simplicity, we will use includes() method and ternary operator (?). The includes() method is used to perform a case-sensitive search to detect whether a string contains another string or not and returns a Boolean value.

In the following example, we have one textbox where we will enter some random text. Upon click of a button, we will check if it contains a character and display the result on the screen.  Please have a look over the code example and the steps given below.

HTML & CSS

  • We have 4 elements in the HTML file (div, input, 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">    
    <input type="text" />
    <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;
}

input {
display: block;
padding: 5px 10px;
margin: auto;
}

Javascript

  • We have selected the button element, input element, and h1 element using the document.querySelector() method and stored them in btnCheck, inputEl, and output variables respectively.
  • We have attached a click event listener to the button element.
  • We have a global variable myChar which holds a character "d" as its value.
  • In the event handler function, we are getting value from the textbox  and storing it in the value variable.
  • We are using the includes() method to verify whether value contains myChar or not. If it returns true, that means value does contain myChar.
  • It will always be true if the textbox contains a text that has "d" character in it.
  • 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 inputEl = document.querySelector("input");
let output = document.querySelector("h1");

let myChar = "d";

btnCheck.addEventListener("click", () => {
  let value = inputEl.value;
  let result = value.includes(myChar) ? "Yes" : "No";
  output.innerText = result;
});