Question

I have an element in javascript like follows:

 <span>280ms</span>

I want to extract 280 from the span element. How can I do it? The content within the span element will be any number followed by ms.

Answer 1

parseInt() is pretty sweet.

HTML

<span id="foo">280ms</span>

JS

var text = $('#foo').text();
var number = parseInt(text, 10);
alert(number);

parseInt() will process any string as a number and stop when it reaches a non-numeric character. In this case the m in 280ms. After have found the digits 2, 8, and 0, evaluates those digits as base 10 (that second argument) and returns the number value 280. Note this is an actual number and not a string.

Edit:
@Alex Wayne‘s comment.
Just filter out the non numeric characters first.

parseInt('ms120'.replace(/[^0-9\.]/g, ''), 10);