How do I get the value of text input field using JavaScript?

I am working on a search with JavaScript. I would use a form, but it messes up something else on my page. I have this input text field:

<input name="searchTxt" type="text" maxlength="512" id="searchTxt" class="searchField"/>

And this is my JavaScript code:

<script type="text/javascript">
  function searchURL(){
    window.location = "http://www.myurl.com/search/" + (input text value);
  }
</script>

How do I get the value from the text field into JavaScript?

Solution

There are various methods to get an input textbox value directly (without wrapping the input element inside a form element):

Method 1

document.getElementById('textbox_id').value to get the value of desired box

For example

document.getElementById("searchTxt").value;

Note: Method 2,3,4 and 6 returns a collection of elements, so use [whole_number] to get the desired occurrence. For the first element, use [0], for the second one use [1], and so on...

Method 2

Use document.getElementsByClassName('class_name')[whole_number].value which returns a Live HTMLCollection

For example

document.getElementsByClassName("searchField")[0].value; if this is the first textbox in your page.

Method 3

Use document.getElementsByTagName('tag_name')[whole_number].value which also returns a live HTMLCollection

For example

document.getElementsByTagName("input")[0].value;, if this is the first textbox in your page.

Method 4

document.getElementsByName('name')[whole_number].value which also >returns a live NodeList

For example

document.getElementsByName("searchTxt")[0].value; if this is the first textbox with name 'searchtext' in your page.

Method 5

Use the powerful document.querySelector('selector').value which uses a CSS selector to select the element

For example

document.querySelector('#searchTxt').value; selected by id
document.querySelector('.searchField').value; selected by class
document.querySelector('input').value; selected by tagname
document.querySelector('[name="searchTxt"]').value; selected by name

Method 6

document.querySelectorAll('selector')[whole_number].value which also uses a CSS selector to select elements, but it returns all elements with that selector as a static Nodelist.

For example

document.querySelectorAll('#searchTxt')[0].value; selected by id
document.querySelectorAll('.searchField')[0].value; selected by class
document.querySelectorAll('input')[0].value; selected by tagname
document.querySelectorAll('[name="searchTxt"]')[0].value; selected by name

Support

Browser	Method1	Method2	Method3	Method4	Method5/6
IE6	Y(Buggy)	N	Y	Y(Buggy)	N
IE7	Y(Buggy)	N	Y	Y(Buggy)	N
IE8	Y	N	Y	Y(Buggy)	Y
IE9	Y	Y	Y	Y(Buggy)	Y
IE10	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
FF3.0	Y	Y	Y	Y	N
FF3.5/FF3.6	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
FF4b1	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
GC4/GC5	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y Y=YES,N=NO
Safari4/Safari5	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Opera10.10/
Opera10.53/	Y	Y	Y	Y(Buggy)	Y
Opera10.60
Opera 12	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y

Key:

IE=Internet Explorer

FF=Mozilla Firefox

GC=Google Chrome

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