Note: This is an updated answer. Comments below refer to an old version which messed around with keycodes.
JavaScript
Try it yourself on JSFiddle.
You can filter the input values of a text <input>
with the following setInputFilter
function (supports Copy+Paste, Drag+Drop, keyboard shortcuts, context menu operations, non-typeable keys, the caret position, different keyboard layouts, and all browsers since IE 9):
// Restricts input for the given textbox to the given inputFilter function.
function setInputFilter(textbox, inputFilter) {
["input", "keydown", "keyup", "mousedown", "mouseup", "select", "contextmenu", "drop"].forEach(function(event) {
textbox.addEventListener(event, function() {
if (inputFilter(this.value)) {
this.oldValue = this.value;
this.oldSelectionStart = this.selectionStart;
this.oldSelectionEnd = this.selectionEnd;
} else if (this.hasOwnProperty("oldValue")) {
this.value = this.oldValue;
this.setSelectionRange(this.oldSelectionStart, this.oldSelectionEnd);
} else {
this.value = "";
}
});
});
}
You can now use the setInputFilter
function to install an input filter:
setInputFilter(document.getElementById("myTextBox"), function(value) {
return /^\d*\.?\d*$/.test(value); // Allow digits and '.' only, using a RegExp
});
See the JSFiddle demo for more input filter examples. Also note that you still must do server side validation!
TypeScript
Here is a TypeScript version of this.
function setInputFilter(textbox: Element, inputFilter: (value: string) => boolean): void {
["input", "keydown", "keyup", "mousedown", "mouseup", "select", "contextmenu", "drop"].forEach(function(event) {
textbox.addEventListener(event, function(this: (HTMLInputElement | HTMLTextAreaElement) & {oldValue: string; oldSelectionStart: number | null, oldSelectionEnd: number | null}) {
if (inputFilter(this.value)) {
this.oldValue = this.value;
this.oldSelectionStart = this.selectionStart;
this.oldSelectionEnd = this.selectionEnd;
} else if (Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call(this, 'oldValue')) {
this.value = this.oldValue;
if (this.oldSelectionStart !== null &&
this.oldSelectionEnd !== null) {
this.setSelectionRange(this.oldSelectionStart, this.oldSelectionEnd);
}
} else {
this.value = "";
}
});
});
}
jQuery
There is also a jQuery version of this. See this answer.
HTML 5
HTML 5 has a native solution with <input type="number">
(see the specification), but note that browser support varies:
- Most browsers will only validate the input when submitting the form, and not when typing.
- Most mobile browsers don't support the
step
, min
and max
attributes.
- Chrome (version 71.0.3578.98) still allows the user to enter the characters
e
and E
into the field. Also see this question.
- Firefox (version 64.0) and Edge (EdgeHTML version 17.17134) still allow the user to enter any text into the field.
Try it yourself on w3schools.com.
If you're running in a browser, then the easiest way is just to let the browser do it for you...
function stripHtml(html)
{
let tmp = document.createElement("DIV");
tmp.innerHTML = html;
return tmp.textContent || tmp.innerText || "";
}
Note: as folks have noted in the comments, this is best avoided if you don't control the source of the HTML (for example, don't run this on anything that could've come from user input). For those scenarios, you can still let the browser do the work for you - see Saba's answer on using the now widely-available DOMParser.
Best Answer
There are 2 problems here:
The standard text field on a web page only accepts/displays plain text. When you add "Wingdings" characters to a Word document, you're actually changing the font for that character to "Wingdings." This is possible because most modern text editors use advanced document formats like RTF, ODF, one of the various Word formats, etc.
So when you copy and paste a selection of text from Word to your browser, all the text formatting (including the font information) is lost. The pasted text will simply be shown in the font & style of that particular text field.
Most documents on the internet are encoded using some form of Unicode encoding, typically UTF-8. Since Wingdings isn't mapped to Unicode, this prevents it from being displayed properly on web pages.