Question

I have been looking around for a function that counts the number of words in a textarea when I click the form submit button.

I am trying to display a message to the user that if they click submit and have only entered 50 or less words. This will be a confirm message basically saying “You have entered less than 50 words, are you sure you would like to continue?”…or something.

Cheers

Answer 1

HTML:

<form id="confirmForm">
    <textarea id="moreThan50"></textarea>
    <button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>​

JS:

$('#confirmForm').submit(function(ev){
    var wordCount = $('#moreThan50').val().split(/\s/g).length;

    if (wordCount < 50) {
        if (!confirm('Less than 50 words, are you sure you want to submit?')) {
            ev.preventDefault();
        }
    }
});​

See demo