Question

I’m trying to set up a text input box on a webpage that sets a JavaScript variable, however I can’t seem to figure it out. Google hasn’t helped, I’ll I’ve found from my searches was how to set an input box’s text using javascript, which is the opposite of what I need.

Here’s what I’ve got:

window.onload = function() {

  document.getElementById('submitButton').onclick = function() {
        var searchterm;

        searchterm = "error";

    searchterm = document.getElementById("searchbox");

  };
}; 

What I want this code to do: Take the content of the input box with the ID “searchbox” whenever I hit “submitButton” and use it as the variable “searchterm”, running all of my code over again with the new variable.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You need to get the value from the search box. Try something like this:

document.getElementById('submitButton').onclick = function() {
    var searchterm = "error";
    searchterm = document.getElementById("searchbox").value;
};

If you need to use the variable searchterm outside the scope of the onclick function, just move the var searchterm declaration outside of that function.