Convert innerHTML of a contenteditable text to normal string

Question

I use a content-editable element :

<span id="myinput" contenteditable="true">This is editable.</span>

and

document.getElementById('myinput').innerHTML

to read its content from Javascript.

But the result is :

• "blah " => innerHTML = "blah &nbsp "

• "bonjour\n bonsoir" => innerHTML = "bonjour<br>bonsoir" (Firefox) and innerHTML = "bonjour<div>bonsoir</div>" (Chrome)

• maybe there are lots of other things that are translated into HTML...

How to convert innerHTML into normal text?

(i.e. in my 2 examples : "blah " and "bonjour\n bonsoir")

Answer 1

Try using;

// for IE
document.getElementById('myinput').innerText

// for everyone else
document.getElementById('myinput').textContent

In terms of finding linebreaks, etc, consider;

el = document.getElementById('myinput');
var nodes = el.childNodes;
var text = '';

for(var i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) {                        
    switch(nodes[i].nodeName) {
        case '#text'    : text = text + nodes[i].nodeValue;   break;
        case 'BR'       : text = text + '\n';      break;
    }
}
console.log(text);

Answer 2

Due to the fact this behaviour is not consistent in different browsers, you have to implement this yourself:

var convert = (function() {
    var convertElement = function(element) {
        switch(element.tagName) {
            case "BR": 
                return "\n";
            case "P": // fall through to DIV
            case "DIV": 
                return (element.previousSibling ? "\n" : "") 
                    + [].map.call(element.childNodes, convertElement).join("");
            default: 
                return element.textContent;
        }
    };

    return function(element) {
        return [].map.call(element.childNodes, convertElement).join("");
    };
})();

In action: http://jsfiddle.net/koyd8h59/1/

Of course you'll need to add your own code if you want to use <h1> and other block-level tags.