wrap-chars
v2.2.5
Published
Individually wrap inline characters/words in a chosen element, with an optional class.
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WrapChars.js
V2.2.5
Contents
About
Tiny script containing just one, static method that takes any element and wraps each inline character in a given tag, with an optional class. Very small (<3KB minified, no dependencies).
Version 1 of this was very blunt in its approach, stripping out any nested tags entirely. This version is much more polite, and will do its best to preserve existing markup. It has several ways to control the wrapping process.
Note: There was a long-standing issue where spaces would be 'undefined' if a spaceChar was not explicitly set, thanks to an oversight in the tests. This is fixed in 2.2.5.
Setup
Vanilla
Download one of the JavaScript files from the dist
folder, probably the minified one.
Import it into your HTML:
<script src="WrapChars.min.js"></script>
You can also embed from UNPKG:
<script src="https://www.unpkg.com/wrap-chars"></script>
Ensure the DOM has loaded completely before continuing.
npm/browserify/webpack etc
tbc
Use
WrapChars.wrap(elementReference, [paramsObject]);
Say we have the following HTML:
<blockquote cite="Lewis Carroll" id="poem">
<span class="line">’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves</span><br>
<span class="line">Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:</span><br>
<span class="line">All mimsy were the borogoves,</span><br>
<span class="line">And the mome raths outgrabe.</span>
</blockquote>
Grab a reference to the element you want to affect:
let domElement = document.getElementById ('poem');
To wrap the characters using the default settings, call the WrapChars.wrap()
static method using the reference as the argument:
WrapChars.wrap (domElement);
You could also iterate over a NodeList if you prefer:
let lines = document.querySelectorAll ('*.lines');
lines.forEach (line => WrapChars.wrap (line));
Note that this is a destructive process. If you think you may want to revert to the original HTML structure at any point you will need to store a copy of the original markup before applying the method.
Any whitespace is reduced down to a single space. Text nodes containing only whitespace are ignored completely.
Configuration
WrapChars.wrap()
accepts two arguments:
| Argument | Type | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| element
| HTMLElement | A reference to a DOM element, e.g. as obtained via querySelector()
or getElementById()
. |
| params
| Object | (optional) An object containing key/value pairs to configure the method (see below). |
params
object
The params
object can contain the following properties, all optional:
| Property | Type | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| split
| string | Defines how text nodes will be subdivided for wrapping. Currently takes a value of "letter"
or "word"
. Default is "letter"
. split
replaces type
since v2.2, though type
still exists as an alias. |
| tagName
| string | The type of element that will be wrapped around each character. Default is "span"
. |
| className
| string | The class name that can be applied to each wrapped element. Default is undefined. |
| deep
| Boolean | Boolean value where, if true, will parse the entire DOM tree of the element. If false will only wrap inline text of the element itself. Default is true
. |
| wrapSpaces
| Boolean | Boolean value to specify if spaces should be wrapped. If a value is set for spaceChar
those characters are also subject to this setting. Default is false
|
| skipClass
| string | If specified, any element with a matching class name will be ignored. Default is undefined. |
| spaceChar
| string | The character to replace spaces with, if specified. The value is standardised internally, so can be a raw character, an escaped hexcode, a Unicode code or an HTML entity. HTML elements are stripped out, to limit exploits. WrapChars.wrap()
intentionally does not convert existing HTML entities, so certain results can be achieved by adding them beforehand. Default is undefined. |
Example
WrapChars.wrap(myElement, {
split: "word",
tagName: "div",
className: "wrapped_content",
deep: false,
wrapSpaces: true,
skipClass: "skip_this",
spaceChar: " "
});
Known issues
word
type can't differentiate between words and punctuation. To work around this, pre-wrap characters and make use ofskipClass
.- Certain (unlikely) combinations of HTML mark-up can cause empty elements to be added when
wrapSpaces
istrue
andsplit
is equal toword
. Can be fixed with minor HTML reformatting. - CodeQL flags a couple of lines for passing DOM text directly into HTML. Since elements are removed first I am not convinced this is an issue.
Version history
- v2.2.5 - Fixed undefined spaceChar bug.
- v2.2 - Added wrapSpaces property, renamed type to split.
- v2.1 - Added deep and skipClass properties, improved whitespace handling.
- v2.0 - Near complete rewrite to play nicer with other people's markup
- v1.0 - Original version