Getting non-html text from CKeditor

Question

In my application, in insert news section, i use a sub string of news content for news Summary. for getting news content text from users,i use CKEditor and for news summary i use substring method to get a certain length of news content.but when i'm working with CKEditor i get text with html tags and not plain text and when i use substring method, my news summary become messed! how do i get raw text from this control? i read this but i can't use getText() method

Answer 1

do it like this

//getSnapshot() retrieves the "raw" HTML, without tabs, linebreaks etc
var html=CKEDITOR.instances.YOUR_TEXTAREA_ID.getSnapshot();
var dom=document.createElement("DIV");
dom.innerHTML=html;
var plain_text=(dom.textContent || dom.innerText);

alert(plain_text);

viola, grab the portion of plain_text you want.

UPDATE / EXAMPLE

add this javascript

<script type="text/javascript">
function createTextSnippet() {
    //example as before, replace YOUR_TEXTAREA_ID
    var html=CKEDITOR.instances.YOUR_TEXTAREA_ID.getSnapshot();
    var dom=document.createElement("DIV");
    dom.innerHTML=html;
    var plain_text=(dom.textContent || dom.innerText);

    //create and set a 128 char snippet to the hidden form field
    var snippet=plain_text.substr(0,127);
    document.getElementById("hidden_snippet").value=snippet;

    //return true, ok to submit the form
    return true;
}
</script>

in your HTML, add createTextSnippet as onsubmit-handler to the form, eg

<form action="xxx" method="xxx" onsubmit="createTextSnippet();" />

inside the form, between <form> and </form> insert

<input type="hidden" name="hidden_snippet" id="hidden_snippet" value="" />

When the form is submitted, you can serverside access hidden_snippet along with the rest of the fields in the form.