Question

How can I count the number of characters in a textbox using jQuery?

$("#id").val().length < 3

just counts upto 3 character spaces but not the number of characters.

Answer 1

For length including white-space:

$("#id").val().length

For length without white-space:

$("#id").val().replace(/ /g,'').length

For removing only beginning and trailing white-space:

$.trim($("#test").val()).length

For example, the string " t e s t " would evaluate as:

//" t e s t "
$("#id").val(); 

//Example 1
$("#id").val().length; //Returns 9
//Example 2
$("#id").val().replace(/ /g,'').length; //Returns 4
//Example 3
$.trim($("#test").val()).length; //Returns 7

Here is a demo using all of them.