Calculating text width

Question

I\'m trying to calculate text width using jQuery. I\'m not sure what, but I am definitely doing something wrong.

So, here is the code:

var c = $(\'.c         


        

Answer 1

I modified Nico's code to work for my needs.

$.fn.textWidth = function(){
    var self = $(this),
        children = self.contents(),
        calculator = $(''),
        width;

    children.wrap(calculator);
    width = children.parent().width(); // parent = the calculator wrapper
    children.unwrap();
    return width;
};

I'm using .contents() as .children() does not return text nodes which I needed. I also found that the returned width was impacted by the viewport width which was causing wrapping so I'm using white-space:nowrap; to get the correct width regardless of viewport width.