How to Get First Word from String in Javascript

In this tutorial, you will learn how to get first word from string in javascript. A sentence is formed using multiple words. From a developer perspective, it can be a bit tricky to get first word from a string.

There are numerous ways to get first word from a string. We are going to use the simplest approach which involves the usage of the split()method. The split() method splits a given string into multiple substrings and return an array of those substrings.

In the following example, we have one global variable that holds a string. Upon click of a button, we will get the first word from the string 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 “Get” 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>Get</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 btnGet 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.
  • In the event handler function, we are calling split() method to get an array of words and we are storing that array in the words variable.
  • Since the arrays have 0-based index, the word at the index 0 is the first word. We are storing that in the result variable.
  • We are displaying the result in the h1 element using the innerText property.
let btnGet = document.querySelector("button");
let output = document.querySelector("h1");

let myString = "Trip to Canada";

btnGet.addEventListener("click", () => {
  let words = myString.split(" ");
  let result = words[0];
  output.innerText = result;
});